


Off the Record

by Penelope_Inkwell



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Coffee vs. Tea, Comedy, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Like honestly at this point everyone is trying to get these two dorks together, Sexual Tension, Stragan - Freeform, Tropes Galore!, creepy shadows, everyone is fed up with your sexual tension kids, longing glances, possibly even the demonic forces
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-01-21 03:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12448293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penelope_Inkwell/pseuds/Penelope_Inkwell
Summary: When Alex is targeted in a personal attack she gets 3 days of vacation she doesn't want and a roommate she very muchdoeswant...in all the wrong ways.Living with Dr. Richard Strand just might kill her...but only if the demons don't get her first.





	1. In Shock

“Just, seriously Nic, why does it always have to be demons? Remember episode 1, with the ghosts? Ghosts were fun.”

“Ghosts were…fun?”

“Yeah, _fun,”_ Alex insisted, sandwiching the phone between her shoulder and chin as she dug around in her purse for her keys. She shook it and heard the familiar jingle—they had to be in there somewhere. “Nice and chill. Barely enough energy to flip a switch on a flashlight. Completely non-corporeal. Fun.”

Nic chuckled. “I think you and I have different definitions of ‘fun’. Where’d you say you were going for lunch? Will you pick me up some fries?”

“I’m just running home. I left my flash drive here and it has some audio I wanted to go over this afternoon. Aha! Found ‘em!” she cheered triumphantly, unearthing her keychain and trying to pull off the earbuds trailing out after it. Stuffing the dangling white cord back into the bag, she adjusted the phone and turned towards her door. “If you want, I could drop by Wendy’s on my wa—“

The phone fell to the ground with a thunk.

“Alex? Alex!”

Alex crouched down automatically to retrieve it, her eyes on the plain wooden door in front of her—the white paint, the grey scuff marks at the bottom from all the times she’d nudged it open with a foot, the brass 24 designating her apartment number. Almost everything about it was ordinary. 

Everything, except for the fact that it was cracked, ever so slightly, open. She clutched her unused keys in her hand. With the other, she picked up the phone.

“It’s my door. To my apartment. I don’t think…I don’t think I left it unlocked. Or open.”

“It’s open? Like, the door is open? Alex, don’t go in there.”

Alex was, of course, already ignoring him. She switched her phone to speaker and stuck it into the pocket of her coat. Her fingers tightened around her keychain, and she slipped her apartment key and the spare key to her parents’ house between her fingers, like really lousy brass knuckles. She’d read somewhere that this was a good self-defense technique.

 _Okay, a couple of keys aren’t going to scare any self-respecting murderer, let alone a demon from the pits of hell,_ she thought.

She could already hear Strand’s mocking voice in her head telling her that there was no such thing as demons. That there was every likelihood of a simple explanation. Probably the murderer.

Nic’s actual voice was still babbling something at her as she pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped across the threshold. The plug-in nightlight she always left in the entryway was nowhere to be seen, and given that it was a typical, cloud-ridden Seattle day, the apartment was all shades of grey and charcoal. Edging inside, she heard her boots clunk across the tile in the entryway. _Clunk, clunk, clunk…squelch._

Alex drew sharply back, then pressed her foot forward again. _Squelch._ She looked behind her—the way out was still clear. She took a few more steps over the strangely wet carpet, reaching for the light switch. It clicked on. She stood there, blinking, and then turned and ran—out of the living room, out of the apartment—and slammed the door, gasping, her ears ringing with a tinny, irritating buzz.

With shaking hands, she reached for the phone in her pocket. Nic was still on speaker. He was saying something, but she couldn’t hear him. The ringing wouldn't stop. She could barely think.

“Nic. _Nic._ I—I need you to call the police.”

 

*****

“Where is she?”

Nic glanced up from the pile of papers in front of him to see Dr. Richard Strand, critically acclaimed author, infamous skeptic, and the recipient of two Doctorates of Philosophy from Yale, charging through his door. Only Strand could charge through a door in a way that could still seem relatively composed, but his breathing wasn’t completely even. His eyes were already scanning and dismissing every potential location—she wasn’t in the main lobby, not in the first boxed-off little studio—

“She’s in the break room. Amalia is in there with her.”

Strand, already moving towards the hallway, checked his step. 

“Amalia’s back?”

“She got in last night. She’s just here for a short trip,” Nic explained as he stood from the table where he’d been sorting through the information left by the police and walked over, casually situating himself between Strand and the hallway that would lead to Alex. Or apparently not so casually, since Strand’s eyes narrowed in on him, annoyed.

“What?” Strand practically bit off the word and spat it at him. His hands were flexing, almost like they might be gearing up to form fists. For someone who was usually the cool-headed, professorial type, the guy could be a little scary. But after this long following a story chock full of demonic symphonies and faces sewed onto other people’s faces and shadow creatures, Nic didn’t scare so easy. He held up a placating hand.

“Look, before you go in there, I just…she’s scared. This isn’t like all the other stuff; this is a personal attack. Alex is one of the toughest people I know, but right now she’s just…vulnerable.”

Strand looked past Nic, his eyes flashing towards that room, towards Alex, like every second he wasn’t next to her was being wasted. His lips pressed thin in annoyance as he settled back on his heels and eyed Nic dubiously. 

“Of course.”

Strand shifted to pass him and Nic stepped to the side, now openly blocking him. Strand’s nostrils flared. Nic dropped the conciliatory tone in favor of the one he used with Alex when she was likely to go off the rails: steady, insistent, implacable.

“Look. I don’t know what’s going on with you two and honestly, I don’t need to. But Alex is my friend. I’ve known her for years, and no one is able to upset her quite like you do.”

“If you’re suggesting she’ll be hurt by my telling her that it’s not demonic forces—“

Nic shook his head forcefully.

“No. That’s the good thing you do for her; you balance her. I’m talking about when you drop off the grid without a word to her, without a single sign you’re okay. I’ve never seen her more exhausted—I don’t know how much sleep that stunt of yours cost her. I don’t care if you have a disagreement, or whatever, but you’re Alex’s…friend. Friends don’t do that shit. And let’s face it, she’s practically married to this job. There’s a pretty limited number of people she spends her life with—me, the other producers, Amalia on occasion, and…you.”

“Me,” Strand repeated, dumbfounded, as though he’d never thought of it that way. As if he’d never considered himself among the select crowd of people that Alex cared about, personally. It was easy to forget—Alex cared about the whole world, everyone she came across. But there were only a few of them she really loved.

Nic scratched at his neck. This was getting uncomfortable. 

“Look, I probably shouldn't have said anything. She’d kill me if she knew I did. And Alex has forgiven you.”

“But you haven’t,” Strand finished, “because you’re upset on her behalf.”

“I’d think you of all people would know how hurtful it is for someone you care about to disappear on you.” 

It was a low blow. Strand’s head reared back as though he had been punched. On any other day, Nic would hate himself for going there, but today was not one of those days. He shrugged. 

“If you’re going to go charging in there when she’s in trouble, then you care about her. And if you really care about her, you owe it to her not to pull that kind of stunt again. Yeah?”

Strand’s face was unreadable for a moment, and then he nodded. 

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Nic answered, stepping aside and letting Strand lead the way as they filed down the hallway.

*****

Alex was sitting at the small, round table in the break room, its surface cracked and spattered here and there with sharpie from when someone hadn’t had anything else to bare down on. Some of the laminate was peeling off the edges, and Alex was using her free hand to pick at it, slowly prying it away. Her other hand was wrapped around a mug of coffee—untouched—that someone had made for her, and there was an ugly green blanket wrapped around her shoulders. A girl she knew—someone with a nice accent—was talking about something inconsequential, really just making soothing sounds, and Alex wasn’t listening. 

Distantly, she heard the door slam open, heard muffled voices speaking in the hallway. Then there were two more people entering the room. They were looking at her, she could tell, but she didn’t look up, kept picking at the loose bit of laminate. It looked a little bit like a shoe, maybe like Italy. 

 

“She’s had a shock,” someone was saying.

“Well, obviously,” the voice with the pretty accent drawled. Alex focused on dislodging the show.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back.”

Footsteps thundered down the hall, growing fainter. She could hear whispers.

“How is she?”

“Not good, I think. She has said nothing since the policeman left.”

 

Alex had the feeling that “she” was her, but she didn’t want to talk. She just wanted to focus on the task at hand—she’d almost managed to excavate the shoe-shaped chip of laminate. 

Footsteps approached again, and Alex made out a distant, crinkling sound.

“Aren’t you not supposed to eat if you’re in shock? Don’t we need to, like, elevate her feet or something?”

“That’s medical shock. This is different.”

That voice, it made Alex blink. She knew that voice. She knew all of them, but that one—it was clear and assured, like a knife cutting through the fog. It grounded her. For a moment it came as a relief, but then her mind was racing with thoughts of soggy carpet and dark rooms and the horrible things that could happen when the lights came on. Her fingers dug more determinedly into the tabletop.

A chair scraped against the floor as someone sat down next to her.

“Alex.” That voice, low and comforting, leaked in through the haze of her confusion. _“Alex.”_

There were fingers on her chin, tilting it up, forcing her to look. Serious blue eyes stared back at her. A thumb stroked her jaw, and she shivered.

“Richard?” Her voice sounded far off, even to her. Those piercing blue eyes closed briefly. In relief? In pain? 

“Yes.”

“What’s—?”

“Here, eat this.”

Something was pressed against her lips and she opened them on instinct and took a bite. Chocolate. 

“It’s a Milky Way,” she mumbled around a mouthful. “It’s my favorite.”

“I know.”

For a few long minutes she just chewed and swallowed, enjoying the malt-y, chocolatey taste of the candy bar. The hand had dropped from her chin and now covered her hand. She let his fingers pry loose her hold on the vaguely footwear-shaped chip in the tabletop. He went to remove his hand from hers and she flipped her own palm up, gripping his fingers tightly. He squeezed back. 

When she had finished the candy bar and had been coaxed into taking a few more sips of her now lukewarm coffee, Alex had come back to herself enough to realize that it was weird that she was still holding Strand’s hand, but she wasn’t particularly inclined to let go. Then she noticed that Amalia was staring at their clasped hands with a small, self-satisfied smirk, and self-consciously she slid hers away. Strand straightened in his chair.

“I—I’m good now, I think. I’m sorry if I scared you guys.”

Nic’s eyes boggled. “Alex. Your apartment was broken into by crazy occultists. You don’t need to apologize for freaking out.”

“What makes you so sure it was crazy occultists?” Strand asked. Alex shook her head.

“Because it was either that or demons, and we all know what your answer will be to option number two.”

“There are other explanations. It could be an obsessed fan, or someone who wants to stop your investigation,” he suggested evenly. “Did the police leave pictures of the damage?”

“Yeah. Nic has them.” 

The producer in question stuck his hands in his pockets. “I dunno, Alex. Maybe you should take some time before looking at those again. It doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

“I can handle it,’ she insisted, then glared at him when he stood there, still unsure. _“I can handle it,_ Nic.”

Nic looked to Strand, who looked at her for a long minute and then nodded. “I think she’s fine.”

“I just don’t know…”

Alex stood up, the hideous green blanket dropping from her shoulders, and slammed a hand down on the table. “As much fun as it is having the men in my life decide what I can handle for me—”

“My thoughts exactly, Alexandra. Give them an inch, they will take a mile.” Amalia replied, breezing back into the room that no one had realized she’d left, brandishing a manilla folder which she dropped in front of Alex. Nic crossed his arms over his chest. Amalia blew him an irreverent kiss. Alex ignored them both and flicked the folder open, trying not to notice as Strand slid closer, his shoulder pressed against her own as he assessed the photos.

They weren’t pretty.

There were scribbles all over her living room walls in what appeared to be black marker. Familiar Sumerian symbols and series of numbers. Sacred geometry. There wasn’t much that looked sacred about it, marking up her walls, leaking into that last stronghold of her personal life. It looked evil. It was evil. 

“The carpet,” Strand broke in, interrupting her ominous thoughts. “It looks dark there. Is that…?”

“Blood?” Alex answered, refusing to look at any of them as she flipped to the next picture, a close up of the place where the carpet and tile met, the heel of her boot leaving a mark on the from when she had rushed out of the apartment. “Yes. They’re running analysis on it now. There were, um…pieces. Of an animal. Laid out in the center of the room in a pattern—it looked like a rabbit. They thought it might have been the rabbit’s blood.”

Strand looked at her, trying to meet her eyes, and she knew what he was thinking—that was far too much blood for a single rabbit.

“It all looks like the normal sacred geometry stuff, right? I mean, ‘normal’, like, what we’ve usually seen.”

Strand pulled several photos from the file and scrutinized them, frowning. “I think so. I’ll send them to my colleague to make sure, but it all appears consistent at first glance. Is it like this in all the rooms?” 

Alex pulled another glossy still out of the bunch and laid it in front of him. It was her bedroom, relatively tidy, the clothes still hung up in her open closet, a few pairs of jeans half-folded in the armchair. But the walls were covered with tiny, creeping script, and the bed…

The white comforter had been slashed with a bloody knife, one of the many symbols that was becoming familiar to her carved into it. Strand went very still.

“Well,” Alex said weakly, “I have been wanting to try out one of those Casper mattresses we keep talking about. I guess this is my chance.”

Strand turned to her, jaw clenched. “Was that a joke? This is not something to joke about, Alex.”

There was no opportunity to argue, because Amalia muttered a low Russian curse and dropped another photograph onto the table. Alex knew which one it would be. It was the final straw, the thing that had sent her running from the apartment as soon as she’d seen it, the thing that had sent her into shock once the police had left.

“What the hell,” Strand muttered, pulling the photo closer as if he might have misunderstood what he’d seen. He hadn’t. 

Alex had a wall of framed pictures in her living room. Her family lived far away, as did most of her friends, and despite the fact that she spent so many of her days interviewing people, her job could be a lonely one. She liked to keep people she loved visible. There were pictures of her parents, brothers, cousins, friends from the studio like Nic and Amalia. There was even a picture of her and Strand, taken for some promotional thing that hadn’t been used. He was looking stiff and uncomfortable and she was laughing, as usual. That wall was one of the things she loved most. And in the police photograph, in every single picture hanging on that wall, the faces had been cut out and pasted back on. Upside down. With the mouth where the eyes should be, and the eyes where the mouth should be.

“That is sick,” Nic said after they all had remained silent too long, staring in horror.

Alex felt her hands starting to shake and breathed in deeply through her nose. Strand reached for the photos and stuffed them all roughly back into the manilla folder.

“That’s enough for now.”

“He’s right,” Nic agreed. “We have other things to figure out.” 

Alex’s head popped up as she stared at him, incredulous. 

“Other things?”

“Yeah. Like the basics. You can’t go back there. First of all, it’s a crime scene and the police aren’t done there, and second of all, just no.”

“Oh,” Alex answered, her brow furrowing. Where would she go? She hadn’t thought of that. “I can stay here at the studio for a day or two, if that’s alright? After that I can figure it out. My lease isn’t up for a few more months but I don’t…I don’t think I want to go back.”

“You’re absolutely not going back there,” Nic agreed. “But you shouldn’t stay at the studio. You’ll never sleep if you're here. Plus, no showers.”

Amalia walked over behind Alex’s chair and reached down to pick up the fallen blanket, folding it haphazardly. 

“I can get a hotel room and you can stay with Nic,” she offered. Alex shook her head vehemently.

“No. No, you don’t need to do that. I’ll just, I’ll get a hotel room or something, and—”

Strand stood abruptly to his feet. 

“You’ll stay with me,” he announced, tucking the folder under his arm and turning to face Alex. 

“Huh?” Alex responded intelligently, her head swiveling quickly in his direction. She tried to re-formulate her question into a more academic sounding inquiry. “I mean, what?” Another failure. 

“I have a house. A large one. Too large for one person, anyway. You can stay with me.”

Nic began to say something, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Amalia elbow him in the side. He shut up. 

Alex stuttered. “Are—are you sure? Because I’d hate to put you out. I mean, you don’t have to. I like hotels. Those little shampoo bottles? Those are great.”

Strand wasn’t looking at her. He had opened the folder in his hands and was thumbing through the police photos again, but she had the oddest feeling that he was only pretending to see them.

“I know the life of a podcast reporter is a glamorous one,” he replied after a long moment, “but is it practical to sign up for an indefinite hotel stay on your budget?”

It…was not. Alex shut her mouth. She could not help but notice that Nic’s jaw was still hanging open.

“I guess, okay then. Thank you.”

Strand merely nodded.

“You will need some things,” Amalia reminded her, her hand coming to rest on Alex’s shoulder. “A toothbrush, some clothes. Nic, surely this can be expensed?”

Alex thought about it. She wasn’t sure anyone could retrieve her clothes, what with her apartment swarming with police and forensic experts and possibly demons. That last part was a joke. Probably. But either way, even if anyone could get her stuff, she wasn’t sure she wanted it. It was crazy to feel that way about the majority of her worldly goods, but right now it all just felt…tainted.

Nic nodded and reached into his pocket, extracting his lumpy brown wallet and pulling out a silver credit card. “Don’t go crazy,” he instructed, handing it to Amalia. She glanced at Alex with a gleam in her eye that, if Alex were any less exhausted, would have made her very nervous.

“So it’s settled,” Strand said calmly, snapping the folder shut. Alex had always thought that was an interesting turn of phrase—people asked it like a question, but they almost always used it like punctuation, cutting off any argument and getting the final word of the discussion. “Alex will come with me, Amalia will get her whatever it is she needs. And she’s taking a day off.”

“You don’t get to decide that!” Alex hissed, feeling herself prickle up like an angry hedgehog.

“I do!” Nic shot back cheerfully. “You’re taking the day off tomorrow.”

“I am not.”

“Two days,” he countered. “Don’t make me go to three.”

Alex felt the urge to stomp her foot and managed to stop herself only because she knew that Strand would make her feel ridiculous if she did.

“Did I mention that I do not appreciate it when men try to run my life?” She turned to appeal to Amalia, who was still looking back and forth between her and Strand like she understood a joke neither of them were getting.

“I am sorry, Alex, but I think I agree with the male Neanderthals this time,” she answered with a comedic grimace. “I think a long weekend off will do you some good.”

“So it’s settled,” Nic declared decisively, parroting Dr. Strand. “Three days off, starting tomorrow. I don’t want to see or hear a single sign of work from you until Tuesday. No demons, no creepy music, no Black Tapes, you got me?”

Alex groaned and Strand nodded. She felt his hand slide to the small of her back and nearly jumped out of her skin, but managed to hold steady as he nudged her out of the room.

“You should also not drive,” Amalia informed her, plucking the keys from her purse before handing it to Alex. “I will bring your car to the doctor’s house. First, I am going to Target!” She was swirling away in a whirlwind of red hair and determination. 

Alex called out after her as Strand continued to steer her forward. 

“Can you even legally drive in America? Can you legally drive anywhere?”

Amalia shrugged and made an unconcerned noise.

“Oh my gosh,” Alex moaned as Strand pulled her into the stairwell.

“What?”

“I'm just wondering which is going to be in better shape by the end of today—my apartment or my car.”

Strand chuckled as they reached the end of the stairs and he pushed open the glass door for her to step through.

“Thank you,” she said. Whenever he laughed, she always wanted to make him do it again. She was addicted to that low rumble of laughter. It was becoming a problem. “I mean, one would think that the apartment would definitely come out worse, what with the demons.”

“Alex, there are no such things as demons.”

They watched as Amalia screeched out of the parking lot in Alex’s little yellow car, the windows down and her hair flying out like a banner behind her.

“You sure about that?” she asked, nodding pointedly at the speed demon that had undeniably taken possession of her vehicle.

Strand laughed again, and Alex suddenly felt that this might not be the worst day of her life, after all.


	2. An Unmitigated Catastrophe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I will talk to you soon, Alexandra. I expect to hear all the juicy details.”

Alex had fallen asleep in the car. She hadn’t meant to—wouldn’t have even thought it possible, given the scare she’d had—but Strand was driving, and his car was so comfortable. It had seat warmers! And Ira Glass was on the radio saying something about kids asking each other to the prom, and she was…

Asleep.

She knew she was sleeping. That kind of sleep that must come before REM, she guessed, when you’re not really awake, but not properly in deep sleep either. She could hear Strand’s voice calling her name, but she couldn’t force her eyes open. She heard a sigh, and then felt herself float upward. Well, not quite float. It wasn’t as smooth as reclining on a hovering cloud. There was a pressure against her back and under her knees, a low grunt, and the sound of a car door slamming shut. Then she was rocking gently, a passenger on a ship drifting slowly out to sea…

 

Alex woke with the sun low in the sky, its dying rays bleeding red, slinking in through the closed blinds in the room. Where was she? She stretched out her hands and feet, unable to fully re-enter consciousness without a bit of a warm up. Flipping over onto her stomach, she sighed deeply. She was surrounded by a familiar scent. It smelled warm, like leather with notes of tobacco and some kind of spice that was probably basic, but she didn’t cook and so couldn’t identify it. It smelled like…Strand?

She sat up straight, blinking the sleep from her eyes, all thoughts of stretching behind her. It did smell like Strand, and it looked like him, too. She was in the middle of a massive four poster bed selected for someone built on a larger scale than herself. The lines of the furniture were elegant and spare, the comforter on the bed a thick, dark blue shot through with gold thread. This was Strand’s room—it had to be. 

She wasn’t sure how to define the feeling—relief, disappointment?—when she noticed that the pillows to either side of her were unused. She'd slept here alone. But she couldn’t bring herself to be too bothered by it. She had _slept,_ after all, and she didn’t remember any dreams. Or nightmares. 

Taking in one last whiff—was that aftershave? shampoo? some specialty brand of laundry detergent?—she shoved herself off the devastatingly comfortable mattress and pulled herself to her feet. A large part of her wanted to take the opportunity to snoop, but her stomach rumbled, interrupting her thoughts and reminding her of things like _journalistic ethics._

Gah. Sometimes she hated those.

Someone—it could only have been Strand—had taken off her boots. Her toes curled in on themselves at the thought. They were just shoes, but it still seemed strangely intimate. She pictured it: herself, asleep, hair spread across his pillows, with Strand bent over her, long fingers carefully unknotting the laces and sliding them off her feet. She would have known she was comfortable, safe; she wouldn’t have stirred. She imagined him resting a hand on her ankle, leaning over to press his lips to her forehead. Only he’d never have done that. He’d never take advantage, probably wouldn’t even want to.

She tried to silence the quiet, persistent voice in her head that wished that he would.

Shaking off the thought, she padded to the door in sock feet, easing it open on creaking hinges and stepping out of the room. The hallway was dark, lit only by the rapidly receding light of sunset pouring in through the large front window. From down the hall, she thought she heard…coughing?

“Hello?” she called curiously, jogging toward the sound and flinging open the one door with light creeping out beneath it to find a whirlwind of dust and a bewildered-looking Richard Strand standing at its center, looking as though he'd been covered in chalk.

Alex mimed holding a recorder up to her mouth. “Now, I know that all of our listeners have been told time and time again that there are no such thing as ghosts, but I—Alex Reagan—have discovered a very spectral version of Richard Strand. I’m sure you all agree, there is no greater justice than the ultimate skeptic being forced to spend eternity wandering across the astral plane.” She snorted a laugh and Strand’s brow furrowed. 

“What are you—Oh.” He looked down at the fine white powder covering him from head to toe. It was even in his hair, which was looking very mussed. It was, altogether, an adorable picture. “Very funny,” he muttered wryly, brushing his hands against the legs of his trousers in a fruitless attempt to dust himself off.

“I thought so. What are you doing?” Alex breezed into the room and immediately commenced poking around. It was nice, in an outdated, vaguely gothic sort of way. There was peeling paper on the walls and an elaborately carved wooden bed. Strand had a white sheet in his hands—not a bed sheet, but the kind that you used to cover unused furniture in fancy old houses. He dropped one end of it and reached an arm up to scratch at his neck. 

“This is the nicest guest room, but no one’s used it in years. I was trying to clean it out for you while you slept.”

So the plan wasn’t for Alex to share Strand’s bedroom for the conceivable future? _Disappointing, but not exactly a surprise,_ she thought ruefully.

“I see that’s going well,” she answered instead. 

“I’m afraid I was somewhat distracted. I should have started with that sheet and then cleaned everything else after. As it is, I believe most of my progress is lost at this point.”

Alex went to lean against a chest of drawers, then saw the layer of grime there and thought better of it. 

“This is really sweet of you. But it’s getting late. How about dinner, my treat? I order a mean pizza.”

Much to her surprise, Strand agreed. 

“That would be nice,” he conceded. “But I really ought to…” he trailed off, motioning to the dust-covered room. Aside from the fine layer of white, there were stacks and stacks of boxes, along with what looked like a preserved elephant’s foot, a mismatched pile of slippers, and an odd-looking trumpet, among other things. Alex poked at the foot and found that it did, indeed, seem to be real. She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“There’s no way we’re gonna get all this cleaned out tonight. I can sleep on the couch for now.” Alex saw his eyes narrow at that like he might argue, but there was no way he was winning this one. She bulldozed forward. “But before we eat, you should probably hit the showers.”

He looked down at himself again. There was even dust in his eyebrows. 

“I suppose you may be right.”

Alex grinned and scanned the room. There was a framed picture on the wall—a still life, thankfully, no family photos for her to imagine with the faces upside down. She continued to prattle. “Then you could stop looking like Casper the Curmudgeonly ghost. And speaking of Caspers, I know one when I sleep on one. I see my mattress advertisements are working.”

Strand cleared his throat. “Well, who wouldn’t take the sleeping recommendations of a chronic insomniac?”

“Haha.” Alex went up on her toes, trying to determine what fruit was in the bowl in the painting. Was dragonfruit an ordinary subject for this kind of thing? 

“I think I could use a shower, too, if that’s alright? I’d like the chance to wash off some of the occult, you know? Isn’t that how the song goes—“I’m gonna wash that demon right out of my hair!” She sang, badly, to the tune of a song from _South Pacific._ Strand said nothing. Alex turned to him, surprised. It wasn't like Strand not to take the opportunity to tell her that demons were fake. Maybe her singing had been even more horrific than her terrible case of apophenia…

Strand was staring at her, his eyes unfocused. 

“Strand? Dr. Strand.” He didn’t seem to hear her. _“Richard,”_ she tried finally, and he jolted back to himself.

“Right. Shower. Of course. You can, erm, use mine. The others aren’t really in working order yet.” It could have been, it had to be, the last red rays of sunset coloring his face as he turned from the room, but for a moment Alex would have almost sworn that she saw Dr. Richard Strand…blush.

 

*****

Alex tried to shower fast. She needed to get out of there so that Strand, who was covered in dust and probably much more uncomfortable than she had been, could take one. And she also needed to get out of there before she could think too hard about the fact that she was currently here, naked, in the ensuite bathroom attached to Strand’s bedroom. 

_Nothing good will come from that train of thought,_ she admonished herself. Sadly, it was a rogue train. The train had left the station, and there was no getting it back. It did not help that she had no soap or shampoo to use but his, so now she smelled like Richard. _Like Dr. Strand, you idiot,_ she told herself firmly. _Your colleague? The subject of your show? Older, sophisticated man who is probably not interested in someone too young for him, who still doesn’t really understand the stock market and who lives primarily off things that include the word_ pop— _popcorn, poptarts, the sweet snap, crackle, pop of Rice Crispies._

She shut off the water and stepped out of the shower, throwing a towel over her hair in a sloppy turban and wrapping another around her body. Then she smacked a hand against her forehead. Clothes. She hadn’t thought of clothes. She really didn’t want to put on the jeans and shirt she had been wearing earlier. They all stank with the smell of stale fear sweat. And possibly hellfire and brimstone. The thought of shrugging those clothes back on made her a little queasy, but what choice did she have? 

Sticking her head out the bathroom doorway—there was no door, which was poor home design if you asked her—she peered into the bedroom to find that her clothes were not in the haphazard pile in which she left them. Instead, there were some dusty footprints leading to a small, pink duffle bag. She smiled, hitching up her towel under her arms as she walked Amalia must have brought the things she’d promised. And, judging from the footprints, Strand had left them there. She looked back at the open bathroom doorway. The bathroom and bedroom had been remodeled, the only rooms in the house so far to have been so treated. The shower was clear glass. I mean, sure, it got all foggy, so no one could really have seen anything but…Strand had been in here while she showered, mere feet away. The runaway train of very inadvisable thoughts had found a whole new section of track to steam over.

Of course, knowing Strand, he’d probably walked in with a hand over his eyes and had nearly tripped over something in his efforts to remain entirely professional. This made her smile again. Sure, it was a little insulting to think that the man she had a massive, ill-advised crush on would rather risk injury than see her naked, but there was something sweet about that chivalry, all the same. She reached for the zipper of the bag and pulled it open.

Three minutes later, Alex was no longer smiling. 

“Strand!” she yelled. “Strand, where is my phone?!”

She heard footsteps pounding up the stairs and thudding towards the room where she stood, wrapped in not much more more than a towel. _Oh, dammit._

“Alex, are you alright?” Strand was asking her through the door. 

“I’m fine,” she answered shortly.

“Okayyy. Are you, erm, decent?”

“Decent?”

Strand cleared his throat. “Dressed, I mean.” 

“Um…in a…manner of speaking.”

Strand was silent a moment, apparently considering the myriad possibilities encompassed in that statement.

“Should I…come in?”

“Oh, you might as well,” Alex snapped; she could hear that she sounded somewhat hysterical. “This is as ‘decent’ as it’s going to get.”

The door opened slowly. Strand was standing there, looking half afraid of what might be inside. When his eyes focused in on Alex, he abruptly appeared much more than half afraid.

“I—I thought you said you were dressed!” Strand exclaimed, looking utterly scandalized, his eyes riveted to Alex where she stood in the middle of his room, still wrapped in her towel.

“I _am_ dressed,” she insisted. “The clothes are…underneath this.” She motioned to the towel.

“Under…underneath it?” Strand’s eyes were fastened to the scrap of fabric, incredulous. She could see what he meant. It was not a large towel. 

She nodded. 

“Yes. Underneath it.” 

Strand merely cocked his head, possibly trying to do some mathematical maneuverings to figure out exactly what kind of clothes she could possibly be referring to if they could fit under that towel.

“Actual clothes? Not, er…undergarments?”

Alex gritted her teeth. “Not technically, but I guess that’s subject to interpretation. I have nothing else to wear.”

Strand averted his eyes. “Well, surely there must be something else. That bag did seem light but….” He trailed off as he made his way to the duffle bag. Alex scrambled forward to physically block him. 

“No, oh my gosh, _do not_ look in there!”

In her hurry, a corner of the towel slipped from her grip. She tripped over it, falling directly into Strand. Of course. They wobbled precariously for a moment, but he managed to keep the two of them on their feet. Or, mostly, as Alex found herself plastered against his surprising firm chest, leaning onto Strand to keep some semblance of balance.

“Are you—oh.” Strand’s voice trailed off, suddenly taking in the scene. Alex’s towel had dropped to the ground, revealing the ensemble she'd been hiding beneath it. Her pale skin glowed against a tiny, plum colored sleep set. It was liberally accented by black lace—some with plum satin backing it, and some backed by nothing but skin. There wasn’t much to the tank top and there was a good deal less to the shorts. Strand had changed out of his dust covered clothes, but there was still dust in his hair, which was wildly mussed.

For a long moment, they stared at each other. Alex’s turban had also been lost in the fray and her hair hung like a damp curtain between them, the ends curling against his chest. His fingers, which had gripped her waist as she fell in an attempt to steady her, brushed against bare skin and it was like a strike of lightning. Energy thrummed through them both and they stiffened.

“I think…” Alex managed at last, her voice sounding too breathy. “I think this is Amalia’s idea of a joke.”

“A joke?”

“Mmmhmm.” 

“Right,” Strand said. He didn’t sound a great deal more coherent than Alex did, she couldn’t help but notice, and he was still looking. It was as though he couldn’t stop looking. But what he was definitely not doing was throwing a hand over his eyes and backing away slowly, as she had imagined. His hand was hot on her skin, and she felt his fingers sliding up her spine. His eyes flicked, ever so quickly, over the length of her body and he exhaled sharply as she almost, _almost_ tilted her chin in invitation. But she couldn't do it, couldn’t risk it, and then the moment was gone and Strand was moving slightly backwards, his hand thumping her awkwardly on the back in a “You’re okay, sport” manner, as if that had always been his intention. Which it _had,_ obviously. She was just letting her imagination get the better of her, exactly what he was always accusing her of.

When they were both standing a respectable two feet apart from one another, he stared down at the pale pink duffle bag like it was a ticking time bomb.

“And I suppose it’s all…like that?” he asked, indicating the contents with a wave of the hand that also included her current attire. 

“Pretty much, though Amalia at least remembered a toothbrush,” she said with a sigh, bending over to retrieve her hair towel and running it over her damp locks. “Did you throw my clothes in the wash or something?”

He nodded. “I’m not sure any of it will be salvageable. The sweat glands of the human body, in stages of extreme fear, give off a—”

“If you’re saying my clothes stink, I know.”

Strand adjusted his glasses, which the near fall had knocked askew. 

“Yes, well it’s normal. An evolutionary adaptation. It helps to repel—” 

Great. She was literally repellant. She cut off the rest of his lecture. 

“So. My clothes. Currently wet, possibly unwearable. Which leaves me with….” She motioned to the satin/lace ensemble and Strand looked away abruptly. 

_Ah, there it is_ , she thought irritably. 

“Well, you can’t wear that. You’ll…get cold.”

“Cold?”

“Yes. It’s an old house. Drafty.”

“Okay. Do you…have something I can borrow?”

“I…right. Yes. I’ll go find something.” Strand looked extremely relieved at the excuse to make a tactical retreat. He paused briefly in the doorway and, without letting his eyes drift back to her, reached into his pocket and handed her her phone. “You wanted this?” 

Alex accepted it and then he was off like a shot, shutting the door behind him, probably searching for a muumuu he could cover her in. 

Alex dropped to the bed, half in disappointment, half in relief. She cradled the phone in her hands for a minute, then dialed.

 

“Hello, darling, did you like your clothes?” Amalia answered with a tinkling laugh.

“I. Cannot. Believe you.”

Amalia tsked. “Of course you can. I had to take advantage of your being in shock, or else you would have known better.”

“I hate you.”

“You do not,” Amalia laughed again. “Tell me, has your Dr. Strand seen any of it? Did he see any of it _on you?_ Or, better yet, off you? Oh, please say yes.”

“Yes, he did see it, and he was completely horrified.”

“Completely horrified?” she asked skeptically. “I will accept, maybe, thirty percent horrified at the absolute most.” 

Alex thought of his eyes, skimming up and down her body so quickly. She sighed.

“Well, during that thirty percent he seemed pretty damned horrified.”

Amalia cackled. “Horrified by his attraction to you, maybe. He fears rejection. He also fears _not_ being rejected.”

The words rang true, but Alex still protested. “You can’t know that.”

“Mmm, men are simple creatures, my friend. Easy to read. Besides, it is time you got yourself a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend—whatever you prefer. But I suspect you prefer the good doctor.”

“Strand is not interested in me that way. He’s _not.”_

“He will be if you wear that black…what is the word? Negligee? I feel certain. I have stayed with you, Alex, and I have seen your laundry pile. All that white cotton will do nothing for your love life.” 

Alex dug through the bag. She had thrown on the first thing that hadn’t seemed entirely sheer and hadn’t wanted to look too hard at the rest, but now she did. There was so, so much lace. 

“Ughhh,” she groaned. “Amalia, this is worse than the demon math. And is—oh my god!” Alex shrieked, voice dropping to a low, accusatory whisper as her fingers brushed a cardboard box buried beneath a pile of thongs and who knew what else. “Is this a box of condoms?!”

“Always be prepared.”

_“Amalia.”_

“What? We are surrounded by crazy occult people trying to use children to bring the apocalypse, yes? This is no time to get yourself pregnant, Alex, and you are living in the house of a man who is hopelessly in love with you.”

“Hopelessly in….” For a moment, Alex wanted so badly to believe it. She let the fantasy of having Richard’s arms wrapped around her, of feeling his low voice rumbling beneath her cheek, play for a moment. She imagined his lips, pressed softly to hers, then pressing harder. And then…she brought that fantasy to a screeching halt. “Amalia, you’re wrong. Strand isn’t in love with me, and this just makes me feel ridiculous and awkward. I am seriously upset with you right now.”

“You will thank me later darling, I promise.”

“I will _not!”_

“I will talk to you soon, Alexandra. I expect to hear all the juicy details.”

“There are not going to be any juicy—“

Alex was interrupted by the sound of the call ending. She dropped her head into her hands.

This was _a disaster._

*****

This was _a disaster._

That was Richard Strand’s first thought as he practically jogged down the hallway, away from his bedroom. Away from Alex, and that…outfit. Of course, if he were being entirely honest, the fact that this was terrible was not truly his first thought, nor his second. It was approximately the hundredth thought that had occurred to him, and all prior thoughts had involved Alex with satin and lace…and Alex _without_ satin and lace. This was one of the scenarios in which it was exceedingly unfortunate that his brain processed information so much faster than average; it gave him far too much opportunity to consider how soft Alex’s skin had been against his fingertips before he had managed to shut that line of thinking _down._

Well, mostly down. It had slowed, at least, from an overwhelming rush to an insidious trickle that he was doing his level best to ignore.

This was not part of the plan. He was supposed to be keeping his distance from Alex, had spent months trying to do so, and now suddenly she was living in his house, sleeping in his bed, and he had to try to maintain some sort of sanity.

It was selfish, Strand knew, to think of himself at a time like this. Alex’s privacy had just been invaded in a visceral, terrible way. She’d had no choice but to move in with her aloof, unsociable colleague, and now her friend was embarrassing her with jokes involving lingerie. Of course she must be mortified. And what a joke it was, implying that there would be some reason that bright, vivacious Alex Reagan would want to seduce or be seduced by a man too critical, too stuffy, and simply too damned old for her. Who wouldn’t laugh?

It had been a matter of hours and this was already an unmitigated catastrophe. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what horrors awaited them.

Hurrying down to the laundry room, Strand dug through the pile of clean clothes he hadn’t yet taken upstairs. There wasn’t much—most of his clothes were dry cleaned, not laundered—but he did manage to find a red plaid shirt that would hopefully be shapeless and unappealing on Alex. He eyed the fabric, assessing. Yes, that would be much better.

For a moment, he stopped thinking of himself, of the torture of self-control that having her so close would inevitably bring. He remembered of that far-off look in Alex’s eyes when he’d entered the break room at the studio that afternoon, the sickening scene that she had walked in on and managed to run out of. She was so strong and yet, for a moment, she had looked broken. He hated seeing her like that, her constant spark flickering. He hated the knowledge that, in some way, this might be his fault. These “Black Tapes” belonged to him, after all, and he was the one who had allowed her into all this madness. He could hear Alex’s voice in his head, telling him that she had made her own choices and he could never have stopped her. And perhaps that was true, but it weighed on him nonetheless.

He trudged back up the stairs, knocking lightly on the door and then sticking his arm inside, holding out the shirt without looking. Surely that was more professional, after all. He tried telling himself to be logical. It had simply been a long time since he’d been with anyone, physically. He was a healthy man who’d had a natural response to seeing a pretty—well, frankly, beautiful—woman in apparel that was designed to instigate sexual interest. It was all very normal, and rational, and completely understandable. He settled into his chair in the living room and continued his mental lecture as he pretended to read an enormous leather-bound book that had been resting in a stack next to him. He had very nearly convinced himself when Alex knocked lightly on the doorway and walked in.

“Hi.”

He braced himself and looked up.

It was all he could do to keep his jaw from dropping. 

“Hi,” he greeted flatly, attempting to keep his expression neutral.

Oh, God. This was _not_ better. Not better at all. If he’d been thinking, really thinking, he’d have known that. He would have foreseen that Alex in some too-small pajamas would be nothing compared to Alex _wearing his clothes._ The implications were just too obvious, impossible for his embattled conscience to silence. Her long, pale legs were adequately covered as the shirt was essentially a dress on her, but they peeked out from beneath the red flannel, dotted here and there with tiny brown freckles. His eyes followed the elegant lines of her legs down to her ankles, to her feet, which were stuffed into lumpy grey socks. His socks.

Oh, this was intolerable. Pure physical attraction he could rationalize—had been rationalizing for a while now—but here she was, sexy smooth legs leading down to his ridiculously oversized socks, and it was just…adorable. He felt a twinge in the upper left quadrant of his torso, which was only do to a temporary acceleration of the heartbeat caused by adrenaline and certainly not because of any feelings of tenderness, et cetera. Because that would be absurd. 

“Sorry,” she said, tucking a strand of still-damp hair self-consciously behind her ear. “My feet get really cold, so I went snooping around in your drawers in search of warmth.”

“Find anything interesting?” 

“I can’t believe you actually keep spare cash in your sock drawer. I thought people only did that in old books but, hey, now I’m $500 richer.” She paused, and he had the feeling she was waiting for him to laugh, or something. “I didn’t mean to intrude on your privacy in any way, I swear.”

“It’s fine.” 

“Are…are you sure?” she asked, hesitant. He had returned to his book, though he couldn’t have said what it was about. The Chaldeans, maybe? He knew he was being a bear. Casper the Curmudgeonly Ghost, indeed. He merely nodded in response.

“Okay,” Alex continued. “Because I’m so sorry about earlier, with the…I called Amalia and told her that wasn’t funny and was completely out of line, and I know it wasn’t very professional, and just…I’m sorry.”

“Alex, it’s fine,” he insisted. He truly did not want to discuss it any further, and there were other important matters to focus on. He laid aside his book, still avoiding looking directly at her. “Are you still hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Alright, so we’ll save pizza for tomorrow. But you really ought to eat something.”

“If it’s not ice cream, I’m not interested.”

He sighed deeply; he couldn’t help it. The more Strand found out about Alex’s culinary habits, the more amazed he was by her natural metabolism. Still, this was not the moment to go into a lecture about nutritional value.

“I think I can manage ice cream,” he answered instead. Alex’s eyes widened.

“You? Have ice cream? Here? Like, with actual sugar?!”

He couldn’t help laughing, just a little. 

“Ruby has all my groceries delivered. She insists I should have ‘something that doesn’t involve lettuce or quinoa’ in case I have guests.”

Alex eyed him suspiciously. “Then how come you’ve never mentioned this ice cream before?” She was using that voice of hers, the tone she took on when she was determined to get to the heart of a story. 

“Because I forgot I had it until you mentioned it. I’m not much of a dessert eater, myself.”

“Who’s surprised?”

“Yes, well…”

Alex clapped her hands together decisively. 

“Well, if you have ice cream, I’m going to need you to lead me to it, pronto. I have conducted numerous scientific studies that have all confirmed that ice cream is the second best thing to an exorcism, and I’d rather not be bothered by any more demonic forces tonight.”

Strand sighed again, somewhat theatrically, but he was, he had to admit, delighted to be back to this, to get to play his part.

“There are no such things as demonic forces, Alex,” he intoned solemnly, leading the way into the kitchen to get her a bowl of Moose Tracks, which was a ridiculous name considering that miniature Reese’s cups looked nothing like the tracks of any creature in the Cervidae family. 

They had settled in at the kitchen table—a large farm-style piece made of reclaimed wood, more rustic than his usual taste—until Alex’s eyes had started to droop, at which point he had insisted that she try to get some sleep and he had, somewhat reluctantly, left her on the couch with a large pile of quilts. Some less evolved part of him had wanted to stay close to her after what had happened that afternoon, but he knew that was ridiculous. She was safe. Far safer than it would be for him if he remained anywhere near her while she slept.

 

It was something, at least, he mused as he headed up the creaking stairs and to his room (and a shower, finally), trying to ignore his knees creaking in time with the ancient wooden stairs. A peaceful evening, which was more than he could have reasonably expected after the day’s events. Strand was starting to feel a bit better about all this. Of course, he’d lost his head a little when he’d received Nic’s voicemail that Alex’s apartment had been broken into. He might have driven down the highway at inadvisable speeds. He might even have intimidated an officer out of giving him a ticket, simply because he didn’t have the time, because he’d had to get to her. And of course, least rationally of all he had, without thinking twice, insisted that Alex move in with him. 

But perhaps he was viewing all this through the wrong lens. 

Things had been… _strained_ between the two of them in recent months. Ever since he’d come back from spending time with Charlie, or “dropped off the grid” as Nic had put it, they had grown distant. _Alex_ had been distant, and that wasn’t like her. He thought about what an idiot he’d been, one blunder after another. Nic had a viable point, and even though Alex’s friend/producer was obviously mistaken about the extent to which she cared about him, he clearly had hurt her. Only, he hadn’t the faintest idea how to fix it. 

He thought back to the podcast, to the moment they sat there, her recorder between them, and he'd tried to mend things, to explain that they were in this together, both of them, and she could rely on him. But Strand had broken faith with her, he knew, and though it had hurt to hear her response to his…well, really, what could he call it besides a plea to trust him? She didn’t trust him, not totally, and he knew he deserved that.

Then there had been that quip about his wife a few weeks ago, in one of the more recent interviews. Not ex-wife, he’d corrected her. His _wife._ From the expression on Alex’s face right then, he’d known he’d been an asshole. _As per usual,_ Charlie would say. He didn’t know if he’d been trying to test a theory, to see if it would hurt her to see him refer to Coralee that way, or if he’d been trying to drive a wedge between them. Perhaps he’d been attempting both.

It had been right after their fight, put on hold in an attempt to get some actual work done, but they’d both been seething through half the recording. He’d been angry, so angry, when he found out that she’d run off to _Istanbul_ to meet with Simon Reece, escaped asylum inmate who was, in the eyes of the United States legal system, criminally insane. At least she hadn’t recorded the argument; he didn’t know how he would have responded to that. She had pointed out that he was a hypocrite, angry at her for running off to parts unknown without telling him. She had been correct, and it made him all the more furious. He had wanted her to feel as upset as he did, had wanted to drive a wedge between them and immediately turn around and fix it, as though it were that easy.

The distance between them was his fault entirely, and he could hardly be surprised. Strand had always been good at pushing people away.

But this was a chance to broker a truce, of sorts. Perhaps now things could go back to normal—the normal of a year ago, when they could watch footage and bicker companionably without it slicing so deep. When Alex might casually show up at any time, not only when it was absolutely necessary. She was here, after all, and if he had a mild infatuation with her, that would be manageable. The facts were these:

\- Alex Reagan made his life better, and more than just marginally  
\- Alex Reagan was now living with him, so inevitably they would be in each other’s company more frequently  
\- Therefore, if he could just keep from hurting her or scaring her off, his life would be improved by her presence. 

And that was all he needed. That would be enough. 

It had to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Hope you enjoyed chapter 2! Please let me know what you think!


	3. Upside Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Would you like to talk about it?”

Alex crept quietly down the darkened walkway. She wasn’t sure why she was being quiet—she just felt like it was important. She didn’t want anyone to hear her. She had that now familiar sensation, like she was herself, but also outside of herself, watching everything she was doing. A single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling flickered dimly, and there was a low buzz and a periodic clink as an insect drew too close.

She walked forward, making the familiar turn toward her apartment door, but something wasn’t right. Even in the darkness, she could make out…something. Something on the door. A symbol. She moved closer, sinking down to run a finger over the substance painted onto her door. It was dark, coagulated, but she knew what it was.

“Don’t do it,” she begged herself. “Don’t go in there.” But her other self didn’t hear her, or ignored the voice of reason—and really, who could be surprised by that? She didn’t see any keys, just a push and the door was open.

The discordant tones of the Unsound nearly blasted her off her feet.

She waded through the sound waves, through the chanting. Low, almost inhuman chanting that struck at her like physical blows, slowing her until she was bent double, pushing forward. Tall shadows bobbed and darted as she walked through the entryway, up to a circle of hooded figures. None of them turned to look at her as she darted forward, out into the center of the room. She had to get there. She knew he was there, he was there and he was…

“Richard!” she gasped, and fell to her knees. There was blood on the carpet, soaking into the knees of her jeans, so much blood. He was deathly pale, cruel symbols carved into his cheeks, his chest, his wrist connected to a large machine emitting a hideous green glow. She croaked out his name again, shook him, knowing it was too late, knowing that he was already gone. 

Suddenly, the chanting went quiet. She ripped her eyes away from him and looked up at the hooded figures, who had finally taken notice of her. All of them around the circles cocked their heads once at an unnatural angle. Then, their hoods fell back. Familiar faces stared back at her—Nic, Terry, Paul, and Amalia, her parents…they smiled a grisly smile at her, each of them in turn. All of them with their faces turned upside down.

*****

“Alex!”

She woke, gasping, cold sweat gathering at her temples, at the small of her back. Her heart was pounding a mile a minute as she struggled to catch her breath, to make sense of where she was. 

“Richard?”

She blinked. He was there, leaning over her, lit by the golden glow of a nearby floor lamp. His cheeks weren’t carved with any arcane symbols, but she found her left hand drifting up to check all the same, gliding across his cheekbone, her fingertips rubbing against the stubble there. His eyes drifted briefly shut and her hand floated down to alight on his chest, running across the muscles there because she had to be sure, had to be sure it hadn’t been real. Her palm rested for a moment there, feeling his heartbeat, and then his eyes snapped open—that bright, insistent blue.

“Alex.”

His voice called her back, and abruptly she was fully awake. Awake, with one hand pressed to Strand’s heart and the other screwed up into a fist that he was holding tightly by the wrist. She sat up abruptly and he released her. The blood rushed to her head and she swayed, steadying herself on the couch. His couch. She glanced up at him.

“Oh God, did I hit you? I’m so sorry.” 

She should probably also apologize for feeling him up, but she wasn’t even about to go there right now.

“You did not,” he said, dropping heavily onto the large square ottoman in front of her. His hair was mussed again, this time from sleep, and he was wearing sweatpants and a plain white t-shirt. “My reflexes are sufficient to prevent my being struck by someone fighting me with her eyes closed.” 

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, hugging her knees. Her heart was still thrumming, the blood still rushing. “I’m so, so—”

“Alex. Stop apologizing. Just breathe for a minute. You’re alright. You’re safe. Whatever you saw in your nightmare was not real.”

“Right,” she breathed. “Not real.”

For a few long minutes, there was no sound but their breathing, Alex trying to slow hers down to Strand’s steady rhythm, and the ticking of the enormous grandfather clock in the front hall. 

“Okay,” she whispered finally. “I think I’m okay now.”

“Are you?” Strand’s voice, which was usually set at a default of skeptical and dismissive, was instead…gentle. Low and soft and coaxing. “Would you like to talk about it?” He leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees, ready to listen.

“My nightmare?”

“Yes.”

Alex considered. It was supposed to be good for her somehow, she guessed, recounting her night terrors in some form or fashion. That was why Dr. Bernier had insisted on the sleep journals. But Alex didn’t feel like talking into her recorder, imparting her fears to something that could only recite it back. No. She wanted to to talk to Richard. She closed her eyes, released another shaky breath, and started talking.

“It was…I was walking to my apartment, like earlier today, except it was nighttime, and it was just…creepy. And I turned to my door and I knew something was wrong. Someone had drawn a symbol on the door, in blood. It wasn’t, like, a real symbol, or at least not one I specifically remember. It’s like, you know when you’re dreaming and you just know things? And I knew it was one of those Sacred Geometry Sumerian symbols. It was…evil.”

She shivered. 

“Symbols aren’t evil,” Strand spoke into the gap, clearly unable to help himself. “They simply denote certain words or concepts—completely innocuous on their own and only given meaning when strung into particular sequences.”

“My dream, my symbols,” Alex countered. “It’s evil if I say it’s evil.”

Strand rubbed a hand across his face, wiping away the ghost of a smile. 

“Of course. Please continue.”

“Okay, umm. So I open the door. Or walk through it, maybe, I’m not sure. And there were sounds. Or, the Unsound, really, like, blasting. And chanting, scary chanting. It reminded me of how those infrasounds can make you physically sick? It was hard to walk through, like some kind of barrier, but I had to keep going, because—” 

Alex cut herself off, suddenly realizing what the rest of the dream entailed. She drew the quilt back around herself and fidgeted with a frayed corner.

“Because…?” Strand prodded.

“Because…I had to. I knew that…that someone needed my help. And when I got to the center of the room there were these figures, chanting. Hooded figures, like monks. And one of those freaky exorcism machines, all lit up.” She began talking faster, trying to get it all out before she could think about it too hard, trying to avoid dwelling on any one image for too long. “And then they stopped chanting and it was just dead quiet and all their hoods fell back and they were, they were grinning at me. Only it wasn’t the Order of the Cenophus. They were all my friends, my family. And it wasn’t really a grin, because their…their faces….”

Alex’s whisper was too low to be heard, now. She mouthed the words, and Strand spoke them.

“Their faces were upside down,” he finished grimly. She nodded. Strand leaned back, his brow furrowed in thought. Or, perhaps, concern? “Was there anything more?”

“There was…” Alex hesitated, unsure whether she wanted to tell him. Unsure of what it all meant. But she had come this far, and there was no going back now. Besides, she felt like she had to tell it all. It was the only ritual she knew that stood a chance of winning her some decent sleep. “You were there,” she admitted.

“Oh?”

She glanced sharply up at his face, but it was unreadable.

“It was…I was trying to get to you. That’s why I went in. I knew you were in there and I couldn’t…I couldn’t leave you with them.” Her throat closed for a moment, like it did sometime when she was too emotional. She couldn’t force the words out. Strand cleared his throat.

“I suppose I was one of them? Chanting, smiling, upside down face?”

“No,” she answered quietly, wrestling her voice into submission, choking out the words. “You—you were dead.”

“Oh.”

“There was blood everywhere. Your blood. It was soaked through the carpet, and they’d carved symbols all over you, your face, your chest.” Strand’s fingers drifted to the cheek that she’d stroked when he’d woken her, and she knew his brilliant mind now understood the gesture. “I got to you, but I was too late. You were gone,” she whispered. “And then I was alone with…them.”

Her breath shuddered and she wanted to shut her eyes, but she didn’t. She barely dared to blink. She wanted to keep her eyes on Strand, to know that he was still there with her. She dropped the frayed corner of the quilt into her lap and fisted her hands in the fabric. She made herself break the silence, forcing her tone to be lighter, steadier. 

“So, that was my nightmare. My subconscious is really sick, apparently. Stephen King should be hiring me to consult.”

Strand sighed deeply. “You don't have to turn this into a joke, Alex.”

“Is this really the time to take away one of my primary defense mechanisms?” she shot back with a weak laugh. Strand did not laugh. Instead he leaned forward and took her right hand between both of his.

“This is my fault. After the day you’ve had, I shouldn’t have left you alone. I should have…”

Alex had regained enough energy to scoff. 

“What, sat here with a notebook all night observing my sleep patterns? You’re not that kind of doctor. Even if you were, you couldn’t have stopped me from having nightmares.”

“Maybe…maybe not,” he answered heavily. His thumb stroked along her knuckles, and she swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. “You don’t have to worry, though. About that.”

“About my friends and family being turned into psychotic death cult monks, or having their faces stolen?”

“About…me leaving you alone to deal with it all.”

“Oh, I—“

“I’m sorry I left, Alex.” He said the words quickly, as though he were trying to rip off a band-aid, but he sounded sincere, his head ducking down to look her in the eyes. “I never apologized properly. I left you alone to fear—to fear for your friends, to fear for me—and with no thought for your feelings. It was…inconsiderate of me. And the result of that lack of consideration is clearly contributing to your nightmares.”

Alex hadn’t thought about it like that. Of course, she’d barely had time to process her dream at all, but it did make sense. She could remind Strand that he wasn’t that kind of doctor again, but she was fairly certain he’d hit the nail on the head. She was afraid of being left alone. But not just of being alone, generally. Alex was afraid being without him, specifically.

“You swear? Never again?”

His eyes creased as if he were in some kind of pain, but Alex wasn’t sure whether to interpret it as pain that he was about to be stuck with her, on his word, or pain that she doubted him enough to make him say it twice.

“I swear.”

Alex met his eyes, bright blue and wide with sincerity, and leaned back into the couch.

“Okay.” She yawned. “I guess I’m still tired,” she admitted begrudgingly. She yawned again. Telling Richard about her dreams really was better than her recorded sleep notes. She felt a bit punch drunk, that loopy feeling she often got when she was strung out and beyond exhausted.

He raised an eyebrow.

“That might be because it’s 2 o’clock in the morning.”

“Right. My favorite time of night.”

Strand stood, looking around for something that he could do, anything that might help. 

“Is there something I can get for you? A glass of wine, or milk? Tea?”

Alex snorted. She was beginning to think that if she didn’t stop him, he was going to start Googling sleep remedies and just reading them aloud until she gave him something—anything—concrete that he could do to help her rest. Amalia would probably have some suggestions that she could give him, but Alex was too tired to contemplate them properly.

“Will you just, talk?” she asked.

Alex knew that she was more than a little delirious from exhaustion and that she would probably be embarrassed by this request later, but at the moment she couldn’t bring herself to care.

“Talk?” Strand repeated, sounding confused.

“Yeah, just anything. You have a nice voice. It’s calming.”

“Considering how irritated you sometimes get when I speak, I find that difficult to believe.”

Alex stifled a yawn and tried to speak around it, her vowels too large for her mouth. “That’s…not your voice’s fault. That’s just your voice’s…content.”

He chuckled, and the familiar sound seeped beneath Alex’s skin, warming all the parts of her that had still been thawing from fear’s icy grasp.

“And your laugh. It’s my favorite.”

“Your…favorite?”

“Yeah.” She wriggled her toes contentedly as it rumbled through the room again. “I know you don’t believe in fate, but you had to meet me, you know. You just—”. She paused for another yawn, this time one that could not be stopped. “You really have the voice for radio.”

“Is that a nice way of telling me I don’t have the looks for T.V.?” he asked sardonically. Alex shook her head and rubbed at her eyes.

“No. You’re very handsome.” She heard him splutter and rolled over to face him. “You know you are. I know the interns forward you some of the fan mail.”

“I don’t…usually read it.”

“Well, you have to have seen some of it.”

“Some,” he conceded. 

“So you know,” she announced with a sigh. “Could you read to me?”

She heard him stand and walk towards one of the bookshelves. The whole house was bookshelves—shelves on shelves on shelves. Then she heard him settle back into the armchair. She almost would have sworn she could smell the comforting vanilla scent of old book pages wafting over her. It smelled like Richard’s voice sounded.

_“Optiks: Or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light._ Sir Isaac Newton. If this doesn’t put you to sleep, I don’t know what will.”

Alex just nodded, catching one last glimpse of him as her heavy eyelids finally closed and she drifted off on the inexorable tide of his voice.

_“‘Part of the ensuing Discourse about Light was written at the Desire of some Gentlemen of the Royal-Society, in the Year 1675, and then sent to their Secretary, and read at their Meetings, and the rest was added about twelve Years after to complete the Theory…’”_

Alex groaned, nestling down into her pillow.

“This is the worst story I’ve ever heard.”

“It isn’t a story. It’s the science of—“

“‘S boring,” she complained around another enormous yawn.

She could hear the smile in his voice when he answered.

“Yes, it is. That’s the point. Now, where was I?” She heard the sound of a page flipping. _"'To avoid being engaged in Disputes about these Matters, I have hitherto…'”_

He was right. In no time at all, Alex had fallen into a deep—and blessedly dreamless—sleep.

 

*****

A year or two ago, Richard Strand would have said that he didn’t believe in the apocalypse, other than in a strictly scientific, Earth-is-swallowed-by-the-sun/virtually-decimated-by-nuclear-war/made-uninhabitable-by-pollution sense. And even those he didn’t think much about, apart from making certain he recycled (a holdover from one of Charlie’s earliest instances of household activism, catalyzed by a particularly stirring Earth Day special on Sesame Street). 

However, despite his many reassurances to Alex after the Unsound Symphony debacle, he suddenly wasn’t so certain that she _hadn’t_ ushered in the end of the world. He had the unsettling sense, as strong as any fictional premonition, that she might be the end of his.

“Did you want a bagel with that? They’re gluten-free. And organic.” The college-aged barista behind the counter delivered this offer in a droning monotone, her heavily lined eyes half closed, and Strand eyed the cup of coffee she was pushing toward him skeptically. He wondered what the caffeine content was—was there even anything in this?

“Er, no, thank you. That will be all.”

“Okay.”

Plucking the insulated cup up off the counter, Strand dropped two dollar bills into the tip jar before walking out the door—not so much to reward any outstanding service, but because the girl looked so tired. It reminded him of Alex, if a somewhat younger version. He had a newfound sympathy for the exhausted and overworked.

“Oh,” he heard the sleep-deprived barista exclaim over the chiming of the bell as he pushed the door open. “Thanks!” she called after him.

Strand didn’t respond, just kept walking. 

Climbing back into his car, he set the coffee down carefully in in the cup holder. Alex was normally a two cream, three sugars kind of girl, but he knew that those seasonal lattes were her favorite even though she rarely treated herself to them. He glimpsed the name scrawled sloppily in sharpie on the side of the cup, “Stan”, and felt the corner of his mouth pulling up. Alex would laugh when she saw it.

It occurred to him, briefly, that it might be considered odd that he’d given “Strand” as his name. It was how he thought of himself most of the time. It had been so long since anyone had called him anything more personal. Alex called him “Richard” sometimes, though. Three times in the last 24 hours. He…liked it. It was a bit troubling how much he liked it. It was more a bit troubling how much he liked _her,_ which brought him back to his apocalyptic musings from earlier. 

“You’ve got to get this infatuation under control,” he muttered to himself. And if a voice in his head whispered that this was much more than an infatuation, that an infatuation wouldn’t have shaken him to his core, he ignored it. He had to. There was no other viable choice.

So Dr. Richard Strand did what he always did in times of struggle, when he needed to be sure that logic was winning the day—he pulled out his phone and began making a list.

 

**Reasons Why You Cannot Become Involved with Alex Reagan**

**1\. The two of you have a professional, working relationship**

Granted, this argument was more important to Alex than to Strand himself. It was her journalistic integrity on the line, and he respected that. Still, in the interest of pursuing reason, Strand could not help making a rebuttal, at least in his head. 

One might consider that, while it would inevitably change the way their professional relationship manifested itself, they would not necessarily have to cease their work. And of course, it wasn’t as though Alex believed that journalistic ethics weren’t a bit negotiable. The chief ethical issue would be on her side, if Alex felt the need to hide their relationship with her listeners, but so long as she was honest about it…

He trailed off. It seemed at least somewhat logical. The very fact that they had formed a relationship of any kind meant that Alex was bound to have some sort of bias; any reporter would. A romantic entanglement would affect the way she saw him, certainly, but any relationship of that kind could only exist if the feelings were already there, in which case those feelings would already be coloring how she saw him. Right?

Shaking his head, he tapped out another line on his phone.

 

**2\. She is currently living with you.**

This, too, was an issue. Living together inspired a natural intimacy—they’d been living in the same house for half a day and things already felt…different. Maybe she’d start to feel emotions that were essentially artificial, based on the psychological response to what could be viewed as an elaborate game of house. Besides, would it not be insensitive for him to, well, make a move, as it were, while she might feel beholden to him? What if he made advances that she found distasteful, but she went along with them simply because she needed a roof over her head?

Strand shook his head. That, at least, was patently ridiculous. Alex was far too independent to be pressured into anything, even unintentionally.

 

**3\. The age difference is simply too pronounced.**

If the first two articles on the list could be brushed aside, this point was an anchor, dragging him back to reality. He was too old for Alex. She was barely older than his daughter. Admittedly, he’d had Charlie at a young and irresponsible age (irresponsible for him, at least. There were plenty of 25 year olds who made decent parents, but he obviously hadn’t been one of them). But still. Alex was young and bright and vital and optimistic, while Strand had been born middle aged and hadn’t gotten any younger since.

**4\. She isn't interested. Almost certainly not.**

How could she be? Even if not for the gap in their ages, Strand was difficult—emotionally unavailable, irritable, set in his ways. Sometimes, when she smiled at him, when she called him “Richard” or her hand rested on his arm for a fraction of a second too long, he thought it was possible. But that, like most “unexplainable phenomena” could be explained away rather easily—he knew the outcome he wanted, and his mind was manipulating the data into patterns that simply weren't there. Apophenia. The dread disease had downed him at last. 

 

**5\. …Et cetera**

Their fundamental differences in worldview. The fact that they were probably looking for totally different things in a relationship at this point in their lives. The fact that Alex was still of an age where she might want children, and he was fairly certain that he did not, and even more certain that he had no business making another attempt at fatherhood when he had failed so spectacularly the first go round. And speaking of that, there was Charlie to thing of. And…Coralee. 

So much could go into number five, and there wasn’t time to write it all down. He’d made his point, and Alex’s coffee was getting cold. With a huff at just how idiotic an exercise that had been, Strand swiped the note closed, stuffed his phone into his jacket pocket, started the car, and headed back to the house.

 

*****

Alex woke to the sound of a door opening and slamming shut, her eyes flying open on instinct. She dragged herself to a sitting position, trying to establish where she was, to form a fist, to…

“Good morning,” Strand greeted as he walked into the living room. 

She collapsed back onto the pillows with a groan. Footsteps were approaching, dampened by the thick carpet. That familiar smell—tobacco, leather, and vanilla. And something else—another scent that was almost as appealing.

“You look like you could use this.”

Flopping over onto her side, Alex opened one eye to find Dr. Strand crouched down next to her, a to go coffee cup extended towards her. Forcing both eyes open, she heaved herself up into a sitting position and crossed her legs, stretching both arms high above her head in an enormous yawn. Her spine cracked and she leaned into it like a cat, popping each vertebra with a slow roll of her back. When she turned back to him, Strand was standing at full height, righting a stack of books on the side table that looked near to toppling, the coffee cup still extended in his hand.

She cocked her head.

“Did you go out to get this? For me?”

“Well.” He slid the top book into place. “I know how you are about your coffee. And I didn’t have any, as I generally prefer—”

“Tea. I know.” Alex smiled up at him sunnily, reaching for the cup in his hand, her fingers brushing his lightly as she pulled it towards her and breathed in the heavenly aroma. She watched as he blinked, swallowed, and looked away. “That was sweet,” she informed him, taking a sip and sighing with delight. It tasted like autumn in a cup. She tilted it up greedily, downing the life-giving elixir like she was going for the gold in Olympic Coffee Consumption.

Strand’s lips curved up at the edges in a soft smile and he exhaled a laugh. 

“I have rarely been accused by anyone of being ‘sweet’, Alex.”

She paused momentarily from guzzling her coffee, lowering it to rest on her knee and fiddling with the top, pressing little crescents into the edge with her thumbnail. “They don’t know you, then.”

Alex looked at him, just looked, the way she so seldom allowed herself to do. He wasn't fully facing her, now, she reasoned, he might not notice. He was nice to look at; it was one of the first things she’d noticed about him all those months ago. It wasn’t exactly a movie star’s kind of good looks. Strand was too tired, a little too frayed at the edges to appear that way, but he had his own appeal.

He hadn’t shaved today, and the stubble suited him. The last year had added a fine dusting of gray just at his temples, and the accent to his dark hair honestly made him look all the more stupidly, devastatingly handsome. His tall frame was clad in a dark green suit jacket with padded elbows, almost stereotypically professorial if it weren’t for the fact that it was cut from good fabric and tailored to fit. Most of the professors Alex remembered from her college days had worn either street clothes or ill-fitting suits that were designed to fit much smaller or much larger versions of themselves, but Strand was particular about his wardrobe, at least most of the time. The rare occasion she had seen him on a casual day made her feel like she was in on a secret, like she was seeing something beneath the shell. 

The moment stretched on for what seemed like a long time—Strand clearly didn’t know what to do with a compliment given for anything apart from his superior reasoning skills. Alex’s eyes fell to the writing on the side of the cup and she broke the tension with a giggle.

“Stan?”

“I’m afraid the barista was not at the top of her game this morning.”

She swatted lightly at his suit-sleeve clad arm.

“Hey! Be nice to the amazing human being who made me my coffee.”

“And what about the amazing human being who _brought_ you your coffee?” Strand muttered drily.

“He’s pretty fantastic, too, I guess,” she conceded, leaning back against the couch. “He lets me stay with him when my apartment is a crime scene, reads boring books about light to me when I can’t sleep. He lends me socks, feeds me ice cream…”

Strand cleared his throat. “Technically I leant you a shirt; you stole the socks.”

“Doesn't press charges against me for larceny,” she continued, ticking off acts of kindness on her fingers. “And of course there's the coffee.”

Strand didn’t say anything. He was still focused on the stack of books he had been stabilizing; he’d now begun shuffling them around. Alex had the sense that he might be alphabetizing. His silence gave a moment for her brain, still fuzzy with sleep, to begin whirring. That list, while impressive, wasn’t all that Strand had done. He had arrived at the studio at the drop of a hat when he’d heard that something had happened to her. He’d coaxed her out of her state of shock. He’d remembered her favorite candy bar. He’d woken her from her nightmare, made her a promise, and judging by the dents left in the armchair, it looked like he might have stayed the night there. For her. 

Amalia’s words crept through her mind, an earworm she couldn’t quite get rid of. _He’s hopelessly in love with you._

Her whirring brain clunked and clattered to a stop, even as hope bloomed in her chest. Strand wouldn’t have done that for just anyone, she knew that much. But for someone he cared about more deeply? Maybe…

“I—I don’t know how I can ever repay you,” she found herself saying—babbling, really. Her brain was still busily attempting to calculate the possibility that Strand might feel something for her, but she’d never been much of a math person even when it wasn’t high level demonic arithmetic, and assessing the possibilities took up too much of her brain. That was probably why she said what she did. Otherwise she might have known that he’d take it the wrong way.

Strand turned back to face her, leaving off the half-organized stack of books. His face was inscrutable, but his voice had gone cold. Distant. Professional.

“You don’t need to repay me in any way, Alex. I simply meant to make certain you were in working order. My work is partially dependent upon your well-being, after all.”

“I know. I didn’t mean—”

Strand was already reaching into his pocket, pulling out his keys. 

“I have to go in to the university today,” he interrupted briskly. “I have some meetings to attend, office hours. I won’t be back for a while. There’s a spare key in the lockbox. The code is 4632.”

“Oh.” Alex set her nearly empty cup on the side table and attempted to look like a grown woman who was not disappointed, not at all. She pushed herself to her feet and and bounced up and down on her toes a few times—this house really was drafty, and the air was cold against her bare legs. “Yeah, of course. I guess I’ll head over to the studio….Or not,” she corrected, the events of yesterday finally catching up with her now that she’d consumed a respectable quantity of caffeine and sugar. She was on yet another enforced vacation. Damn, she hated those. She shook her head and pasted on a smile. “Anyway, I’m sure I’ll find something to do.”

Strand had already begun heading out of the living room, presumably headed for the side door in the kitchen. He halted and turned back to her, lingering on the threshold the way only an utterly un-superstitious person could. 

“But you’re going to rest, right? Not to work.” It sounded like he was wishing very hard that he could make that a command, but knew how fruitless that effort would be. 

“Of course.” Alex smiled unconvincingly. “Rest. Relaxation. That’s absolutely the plan. Don’t worry about me, Dr. Strand—you’ve done enough.”

Strand opened his mouth like he might like to say something, or several somethings, but ultimately he closed it, shook his head, and headed out the door, shutting it behind him without a goodbye.

Alex sighed. A Saturday all alone with no work. What was she supposed to do with that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaalll the notes on this one! I'm supposed to be packing, but instead I'm here, posting a chapter! I am a monster who cannot be stopped!
> 
> \- First, thank you so much for reading! You guys' support has really meant the world, and I appreciate your comments. Please let me know what you liked, what embarrassing grammar mistakes I made, etc!
> 
> \- Yes, I had to write a "Strand reads Alex to sleep" scene since it's something we've all been waiting for since we first heard his dreamy, dreamy voice / since her insomnia began. I've seen some of the excellent writers around here write similar scenes of Strand lulling Alex to sleep, but I wanted to give the concept my own spin. 
> 
> \- Strand is, as mentioned above, reading from Newton's _Optiks_. It's very much in the public domain at this point, and as Project Gutenberg assures me, "is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever." :)
> 
> \- Finally, **A Brief History of How I'm Manipulating Time (In This Story):**
> 
> Yes, I am playing a _very_ tiny bit with the timeline here. By my math Strand should be in his late 50s, since he was supposedly 16 in 1976. But frankly, that seems a little old to be riding around on bikes solving crime because you want to help your mom. So I'm putting Strand at ~around~ 12 in 1976, because to me it fits his actions better. I have an easier time believing that Strand misspoke in telling his story, since most of my stories begin like, "I was like, 10, or possibly 14. No, 12. Maybe?"
> 
> Then there's Charlie. Technically she probably should be 32-36, but from my view, she acts and speaks like she's 19. Admittedly, since Coralee has been gone for 20 years, that doesn't quite work. So I'm going with ~27 for Charlie, and as far as I'm concerned Strand is in his very early 50's, making him 25 or 26 when she was born. 
> 
> And yes, okay, I'm _also_ doing it for shipping purposes but frankly it works better from a character analysis perspective and my mind will not be changed. No, I don't have any shame. ;)
> 
> Thanks again to all of you! Stay safe, kids, and just stick to regular geometry, okay?
> 
> \--Penny


	4. Facing Facts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is there some kind of monetary incentive I could offer to ensure that this never gets brought up?”

Alex Reagan was not what one would call a rule-follower, though her conscience rested more easily when she bent the rules rather than outright breaking them. So, she wouldn’t binge watch any of the multitude of Black Tapes in the closet of Strand’s home office, and she wouldn’t spend her day poking around the internet for information on the Order of the Cenophus. That would definitely be work.

Instead, she climbed into her car and headed to her apartment building. Because that, technically, was personal. Drumming her fingers against the steering wheel, Alex reached out one hand to the volume dial and set it to blasting, trying to drown out any thoughts of where she was going or what was doing. Nic, Amalia, Dr. Strand—they’d all be furious that she was going there. 

Picturing the distant look on Strand’s face before he’d left, she wondered if that wasn’t half the reason she was doing it; she’d rather have an angry Strand than a cold, untouchable version. 

It was a good 45 minutes from the late Howard Strand’s house to her apartment, but as she pulled into the parking lot, she felt that the drive had been much too short. It was possible—just possible—that this had not been the best idea. There were two police cruisers stationed in the parking lot. She glanced down at her clothes self-consciously.

Shortly after Strand had walked out the door that morning, her phone had chimed, signaling a text from Amalia. 

_Check the inside pocket of the bag. Consider it an early birthday present. Give Dr. Strand my love. xoxo._

Alex had raced up the stairs and torn open the bag, scraps of lace flying as she dug inside the duffel until she located the zipper she had not noticed the night before. Sliding it open, she reached inside and pulled out a random assortment of items: a tiny sampler of perfume that smelled incredible, a paperback book, three t-shirts, two pairs of cotton shorts, and one pair of black leather leggings. The shorts were technically athletic wear, but were tiny—a compromise in Amalia’s eyes, no doubt—and the book looked to be a trashy romance novel, a genre only Amalia knew that she secretly adored. 

The t-shirts, though, were definitely Amalia’s _piece de resistance._ Alex suspected that they had actually been ordered in advance as intentional birthday presents, because there was no way that Amalia had found these on short notice. The first was a green, fairly innocuous tunic-style tee emblazoned with the words “CLAP IF YOU BELIEVE” and a tiny, Disney-esque fairy waving a glittery wand. The second was a white, low-cut v-neck with the Ghostbusters logo—a ghost circled and crossed out in red. Alex laughed aloud at that one. And last but not least was a black crop top featuring a cartoon ghost puckering her bright red lips. It read “Be My Boo”. Alex had choked on her laughter. She couldn’t wear these around Dr. Strand. She also couldn’t _not._

She’d nearly forgotten that it was her birthday tomorrow until Amalia had mentioned it. God, that was depressing—she was forgetting her own birthdays. Did that make her old? Shaking her head, she looked back to the pile of t-shirts spread out in front of her. Birthday or not, she had things to do.

Given that these were the most “decent” clothes she currently had access to Alex had shrugged on the fairy top and her freshly laundered jeans from the day before (the shirt had not been salvageable, but at least she now had pants) before heading out the door that morning. Now, as she prepared to approach law enforcement officials to convince them to share important information with her, she wished she was wearing something a little bit more professional. 

But alas, no way through but through.

She jogged up the stairs, headed toward apartment 24, trying to remind herself that she had faced worse things. Or, at least, things that were almost as bad. But thinking about the terrors of the past wouldn’t make her feel better now. Walking beneath the lone lightbulb dangling from its cord, she shivered, remembering her dream from the night before. She pulled her jacket more tightly around her as she arrived at her familiar corner of the third floor. 

The door to her apartment was open and people were buzzing like bees inside. She walked confidently up to the door only to be stopped by a man in a navy police uniform. 

“Excuse me miss, this is a closed crime scene. Law enforcement personnel only.”

“Can you tell me anything about it?” Alex asked. “Have the police learned anything yet?”

The officer eyed her speculatively.

“You with the news? Channel 4 or something?”

Looking down, Alex realized she was still wearing her PNWS badge on her jacket. She laughed and pointed to the name printed there.

“Oh, no. I mean, I am a reporter, but that’s not really why I’m here. I’m Alex Reagan. This is my apartment.”

The man took a step back, his expression becoming more open and sympathy warming his big brown eyes.

“Oh. My apologies, miss.”

Alex waved this off. 

“Not at all, you’re just doing your job. What was your name?”

“Officer Melbrooke.” He gave her a smile. “But you can call me Joe.”

Alex extended a hand. 

“It’s very nice to meet you then, Joe.” 

He accepted her handshake with another grin. Officer Joe Melbrooke appeared to be younger than her—she’d guess somewhere around 28—with short hair, plenty of muscle, and surprisingly good posture. She caught a glimpse of the bold lines of tattoos creeping out from under his sleeve as he shook her hand up and down—she could make out what looked like a globe, and maybe the claw of a bird.

“Marines?” she guessed, and his eyes widened, surprised. His badge rose as his chest puffed out proudly. 

“Second Battalion, Eleventh Marines. How did you know?”

“You have that look, you know?” Officer Melbrooke’s shoulders relaxed. Nic had always said that was one of the things that made her good at her job—the ability to connect with people, even suspicious people, and put them at ease. “I just wanted to drop by, see if there’d been any word?”

“Of course.” Joe peered over his shoulder. Several figures in official-looking vests were crouching down and appeared to be pulling samples from the carpet while people in suits paced back and forth, murmuring quietly among themselves. Cameras flashed and left Alex momentarily blinded. Joe scratched at his short hair uncomfortably. “I wish I could help you, miss, I really do, but I’m pretty much just guarding the perimeter. I haven’t heard anything, and I don’t think the detectives are going to be willing to discuss the case.”

That was disappointing, but Alex wasn’t ready to give up yet.

“I don’t guess there’s any chance I could grab some of my clothes, is there?” 

Joe smiled apologetically.

“Probably not.”

Hmm. Clearly this was going to take a little bit more work. 

“Well, that’s a bummer. How did you end up on guard duty for my creepy apartment?”

He shrugged. “I volunteered. Most of the precinct, they’ll do about anything, but this demon shit freaks people out, you know? Or, stuff, I mean.” 

“But not you?”

Joe’s grin folded in on itself, taking on a self-deprecating slant.

“I figured I’d seen worse, right? Two tours in Iraq. But I have to say, this stuff is fuc—I mean, it’s really dark, you know? My buddy Mike was watching the place overnight, and let me just say I am so not jealous of him.” He paused for a moment before turning back to her, stricken. “I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t have said that. I mean, this is where you live.”

“It’s fine,” Alex assured him. This officer was definitely new to the force, and it was kind of endearing. “I was freaked out, too.”

“Melbrooke. Who’s that you’re talking to?” 

A sharply dressed Black woman with flawless makeup had turned away from overseeing the vested men dusting the picture frames for fingerprints and strode toward them purposefully. 

“Oh. This is Alex Reagan, the tenant. Miss Reagan, this is Detective Martinez.”

“Nice to meet you,” Alex said with a winning smile, “though I could think of better circumstances.”

Detective Martinez did not smile back.

“You live here?”

“Uh, yes. I did. I mean, I do.”

“Hmph,” she huffed, eyeing the officer next to her. “Officer, quit flirting and focus on your job. Miss Reagan, you can come in.”

She swiveled and walked back inside. Alex followed behind. She wasn’t all that easily intimidated, but this woman was intense.

“Officer Johnson talked to you yesterday. I read his file. There wasn’t much in there.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I think I was kind of in shock. I honestly don’t remember the interview that well.”

The detective frowned. 

“He should have waited until you were settled enough to give a decent account.” It didn’t sound as though she were concerned with Alex’s delicate state so much as the lack of information it had gotten her. “I’ll ask you a few questions if that’s alright.” It was not phrased as a request.

“Can I ask a few in turn?” Alex asked. Detective Martinez’s lips thinned, but she nodded.

“Fine. Johnson said you seemed to know something about these markings.” She motioned to the walls, which were covered in numbers and symbols.

Alex did attempt to explain—about the story she was chasing, the Sumerian symbology and sacred geometry, the death cult. She tried to keep her conversation light on demons, but noticed the detectives eyes narrowing when the subject inevitably came up.

Finally, it was Alex’s turn to ask a question.

“Is it possible…do you think this could just be a fan of the show? Like, a pretty unhinged fan?”

Martinez pursed her lips.

“It could be. They’d have to be a very committed fan. I wouldn’t bank on it.”

“What are your instincts telling you?” Alex asked. She was trying to keep her focus on the woman she was speaking to, but it was hard not to be distracted. Next to her, someone was pulling up a large chunk of bloodstained carpet and sticking it into a plastic bag.

“Not to talk to the press.”

Alex kept her eyes fixed on the detective, the way she did with Strand when he was being particularly ornery. Martinez cracked faster than he ever did. The woman huffed again, but folded; Alex might not be ranked number one in journalistic integrity, but she was damn good at getting people to talk.

“I don’t think it was a fan,” Martinez admitted. “I’m sure your show’s popular and all, but this doesn’t feel like the work of an…enthusiast. It was designed to frighten you.”

“I don’t frighten that easy,” Alex replied automatically. Strictly speaking, she wasn’t so sure that was true anymore, but she didn’t let that stop her. Detective Martinez nodded in approbation.

“Good.” Her gaze fell upon Alex’s chest, and Alex realized that the woman was reading the glittery letters. CLAP IF YOU BELIEVE. Feeling her cheeks warm, she pulled the edges of her jacket more closely together. 

“Any chance I could grab a few of my clothes?” 

The detective made a noise that made Strand’s exhale-laughs seem positively effusive, but Alex thought it seemed like an amused sound. Amused, or possibly contemptuous.

“‘Fraid not. Not until Forensics gets through with everything. Could be a week.”

Alex couldn’t help it, she groaned. Detective Martinez’s head swiveled, peering past her at some more people—fellow detectives, presumably—in suits and sunglasses that were entering the apartment. Sunglasses. In Seattle. She frowned.

“Tell you what, Miss Reagan, I’ll ask Chief Rutledge to call you when there’s an update, alright?”

Martinez marched off in the direction of the suits and Alex took that as unspoken permission to do what she wanted. She wandered past the forensics unit bent over their task and quietly slipped into her bedroom. She left the door open out of respect for the investigators, but she immediately began poking around the room. The lights were off and the gray-blue light soaking through the curtains leached away the room’s natural color, lending it a dreamy, ethereal appearance.

The bedclothes had been left undisturbed, but were not undisturbing, symbols still carved and painted into them in blood. It occurred to her that she had left her bed in complete disarray the previous morning, the sheets and comforter twisted from her nighttime tossing and turning. Now, however, they were perfectly arranged; like an add for the Pottery Barn, if the Pottery Barn had a _Stylish & Satanic_ line. Someone had seriously _made her bed_ in order to vandalize it. What kind of psychos were these people?

Her mind flashed back to a time before all this: notes—not written in blood, but in crabbed, spidery handwriting. Threats slid beneath her door. Reminders left on her welcome mat. Her heartbeat sped up and the room started to spin. Alex tried to take a deep breath and steadied herself on the doorframe. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

She opened her eyes to find a pool of darkness gathering in the far corner of the room. No. No, that couldn’t be right. Alex shut her eyes again tight and snapped them back open. The shadow was still there, undulating, though with each passing breath it seemed to be expanding, slowly coalescing into something with actual form. A long, clawed hand…

“Miss Reagan.”

Alex yelped and flew around to find herself facing an startled-looking Officer Melbrooke. 

“Sorry if I scared you, miss.”

“Oh, no. No, it’s fine. I was just…”. She pivoted back to the corner she’d been looking at, but the shadow was gone. 

“You okay, miss?”

Alex nodded, maybe a few too many times. “Yeah. I’m okay. I’m great.”

The officer did not look convinced. He gently placed a hand on her elbow.

“I’m sorry, Miss Reagan, but Detective Martinez says you need to leave the premises. It’s basic precautionary stuff.” And with that, Alex found herself ushered out of her apartment and more or less pushed down the stairs, an apologetic Officer Melbrooke nodding farewell.

All in all, that had not been as productive an outing as she had hoped. She approached her car, but froze when she noticed a small, white piece of paper tucked beneath the windshield wiper. She fought against the flashbacks, the dizziness from her room coming back again. Leaning against the car, she tried to steady herself. This was fine; it was nothing. Logically, it was nothing. All that was ages ago, before this, before the Black Tapes, and it was over, it couldn’t be…

Alex blinked down at the paper, not remembering how it had gotten into her hand. Her fingers trembled as she pulled it open.

It was an advertisement for a new Chinese restaurant a block away. 

Alex exhaled a shaky breath and dropped into the driver’s seat of her car, her knees still feeling a little bit jelly-like. But from what? From the…encounter? Hallucination? Whatever it was she’d experienced in her apartment. Or was it the stupid note on her car? Alex wasn’t sure which one had disturbed her more, and that was worse. The notes were a trigger for her, sure, but enough time should have passed, right? She rested her forehead against the chapped leather of her steering wheel.

The phone she had just tossed into a cup holder buzzed in several long tremors. A call. Picking up the phone, she answered.

“This is Alex. Hi. Oh, um, yes. You’re in town? I—of course, I’d be happy to meet with you.”

*****

Dr. Richard Strand was pacing the perimeter of his impersonal, shoebox-sized office. If the floor were carpet he’d have worn a track in it by now, but it was cheap tile. He’d been given a small, out of the way corner of the Religion building, which had already been outdated in the 70’s and clearly hadn’t received any sort of remodel since. Someone probably thought they were having a joke, sticking a fervent non-believer bent on disproving supernatural phenomena in here, but Strand didn’t much mind the other department members. They weren’t as off-put by his skepticism and occasional, if unintentional, rudeness—one didn’t become a tenured professor specializing in religion without growing some thick skin. 

He finally halted his endless loop of the room, leaning his forehead against the cool glass of the window with a sigh. Students were studying and milling about in the courtyard below, discussing Hume or Aquinas or UCLA’s offensive line, but he barely noticed them. His mind was still stuck in his living room, on the scene that had played out earlier that morning. 

He’d lied to Alex; he didn’t have office hours. Well, he did, but by appointment only, and most of his students were too intimidated by him to try to make one. He didn’t have any real meetings scheduled, either, though he had been talked into getting coffee (tea, in his case) with the West Coast’s foremost expert in Sephardic Judaism, a visiting professor of Islamic History, and a Catholic priest. It sounded like a bad joke about walking into a bar, but the conversation—not about personal beliefs, but rather about which local restaurants were decent—had been interesting enough to almost keep his mind off Alex for an hour or so. Now he had no such luxury.

There had been no choice but to leave the house. His…infatuation, it had gotten worse than he realized. Seeing Alex’s elaborate stretching rituals to shake herself awake would have made any man’s heart beat faster, but much worse was the way her hair had been a wavy mess, her smile so soft and sleepy upon waking. It planted dangerous thoughts in his head: what it might be like to have her wake up beside him every morning. And then she’d started listing off his kindnesses toward her. He was such a lovesick schoolboy; it was ridiculous. For a moment, he even thought it had dawned on her, what all his fussing over her might mean. He’d had to get out of there before she saw too much.

Strand drummed his fingers against the windowsill. He had the feeling Alex was probably getting up to something she shouldn’t, but he had that feeling regularly. Nic probably did, too. It was just the sort of feeling you lived with when you had someone as eager and unstoppable as Alex Reagan in your life. When she got the scent of a story or suspected that she might find a piece to a puzzle, she could almost never be stopped. It was one of the things he liked most about her. And this feeling—the vague sense that, _somewhere,_ Alex was doing _something_ that could be dangerous if the wind shifted the wrong way—was nothing compared to how he had felt the previous afternoon. 

Not when he’d gotten the call from Nic that something had happened to Alex. No, before that.

Strand had been a disaster all yesterday morning. At first he’d attributed it to waking up on the wrong side of the bed. After all, Alex wasn’t the only one who had been sleeping poorly. He’d had the vague sense of having some sort of nightmare, but he couldn’t catch the edge of it in his memory. He’d woken with knots in his stomach, unable to eat or drink anything, feeling unsettled at the very mention of food. He’d had to cancel a lecture—his hands had been shaky, his vision cloudy. He’d even considered stopping by the campus clinic just to be safe, but had decided against it. All day he’d been plagued by this feeling of senseless dread. Then he’d gotten the call and all that had fallen away—he had been too focused on getting to Alex, doing everything in his power to make certain she was safe. 

It wasn’t the result of some sort of premonition. He _knew_ that. It was stress and poor sleep compounded by low blood sugar. Of course it was. He just had to keep that in mind, and to keep the doors to the more fanciful corners of his brain shut tight.

He heard a knock on the door and turned, leaving puffs of white breath behind on the glass of the window. In the doorway stood a much older, stout man with dark brown skin, a neat beard, and a cheerful smile.

“Dr. Alam,” Strand greeted with a nod. “Did you need something?”

“Oh, not really. Not really.” The man was always impeccably friendly, even to Strand. Alam was more or less the one man welcoming committee of the department. “I just wanted to introduce you to our guest speaker for the lecture in 302 this afternoon.”

“That class Professor Hernandez is teaching on Spiritulism?”

“The very one,” the man agreed with a nod. He stepped aside, making way for another, taller figure. “Dr. Richard Strand, this is Tannis Braun. Mr. Braun, Dr. Strand.” 

Tannis Braun was suddenly standing there, in his doorway, extending his hand with a warm grin. Strand waited a beat too long before reaching his hand out to Braun’s, shaking it briskly, and dropping it.

“Dr. Strand and I are actually already acquainted,” he explained to Dr. Alam. “We run in the same circles.”

The older man nodded. “Ah, yes. The paranormal research, I suppose.”

Strand scoffed and the laugh lines by Tannis Braun’s eyes deepened. 

“Not usually on the same side, I’m afraid, but Dr. Strand has a venerable mind. You’re lucky to have gotten him aboard; I don’t know how many schools have tried and failed in the attempt.” Dr. Alam lit up at the praise, happy to think his university was exceptional enough to have attracted a highly sought commodity of its own accord. Braun’s own smile grew suspiciously wide as he turned again to face his academic colleague and rival. “What would you say it is that _drew_ you to Seattle, Strand? Anything in particular?”

Strand felt his shoulders stiffen.

“It was convenient for a variety of reasons.”

“Right, that podcast of yours. I hear its gotten some buzz. Your friend…Alex? She must be pleased.”

“I believe so,” he replied coldly. Braun’s cheer only grew. He looked to Alam.

“Have you met Miss Reagan? She's quite a remarkable young woman. A fearless reporter. And, of course, very pretty.” He winked. “She follows Strand around, investigating his attempts to disprove all supernatural activity.”

“I do not believe I have had the pleasure. Though of course at my age, some details do get lost.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t forget Alex,” Braun assured him, and Strand tried to keep his fingers from clenching at the familiarity of his address. Lots of people called Alex Alex. All the time. But something about the way Braun said it…

“She’s memorable,” Strand agreed evenly, his gaze fixed on Braun. The other man had made eye contact and Strand refused to be the one to break it.

“Tell me, is she doing well?”

“Fairly well.”

“And do you see her often?”

Now Braun was laughing at him. He could see it in the sparkle of man’s eyes, almost as if he knew. Knew that Alex was living with him. But that was impossible.

“More lately.”

“Ahh. How fortunate for you. Would that I was so lucky.”

Strand felt his eyes narrow sharply.

“Well, that’s unlikely. She’s very busy these days. I don’t expect you’ll be seeing much of her.”

His words, on the surface, were a simple statement of fact, but a deaf man would hear the warning buried beneath them.

Braun finally looked away to peer around the room and Strand felt stupidly satisfied at having won their unspoken staring contest. He tried not to be irritated by the fact that Braun was assessing his room, either searching for signs of paranormal activity with his third eye or whatever it was, or else judging the bare, impersonal appearance of Strand’s office.

“Would you like to attend Mr. Braun’s lecture?” Alam inquired politely. “Margaret & Father Benedict are coming along, as well. Always good to see the other side of things, eh?”

“I’ll pass.”

Braun raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure, Strand?”

“I’m sure,” he responded curtly. “I don’t have time to hear about people who spent a century wrongfully thinking they could contact the spirit world.” 

Normally he tried not to be so very unpleasant, but at the moment he was in rather a bad mood.

“Ah, Dr. Strand. Ever our skeptic,” Alam chimed in cheerfully, an obvious attempt to break the tension. Although when Braun spoke again, he was as breezy as ever.

“Oh, Dr. Strand is as much of a true believer as any of us, I assure you. Just in his own way.” 

Alam looked somewhat alarmed by this statement, apparently aware that Braun, despite his light tone, was crossing some sort of line.

“They say everyone does have a god, depending of course on how you look at it,” Alam added cautiously. Strand blew out an impatient breath.

“If mine is Reason, I suppose I can live with that.”

Braun laughed.

“Oh, your god isn’t Reason, Strand. It’s yourself—you’re devoted to your own personal grasp of reality, and you’ll ignore any amount of evidence that threatens its underpinnings.” He turned to Alam. “If Strand were a Muslim, he’d be an imam. If he were a Christian, he’d be a Puritan, Buddhist, and he’d be a monk. His primary character trait is his single-minded devotion to what he sees as important. He just happens to have what one might call a _vested interest,”_ Braun paused meaningfully, “in insisting that nothing exists outside the realm of what can be explained.”

“If you’re really accusing me of bending the truth for monetary gain—“

“Not for money, no. You bend it for your own peace of mind, in part because it makes you feel that there is less outside of your control.”

“And the other part?” Strand demanded sarcastically. Dr. Alam looked as though he’d like something to hide behind, but there was nothing in Strand’s barren wasteland of an office to protect him.

Braun didn’t answer immediately. He stared for a long moment, and then shrugged.

“I’ll see you soon, Strand.”

Strand crossed to his desk and began tapping sheaves of paper on the top of his desk to align them. 

“I have a very busy day, unfortunately. I doubt we’ll have the opportunity.”

He caught a glimpse of Braun’s wide grin as the supposed psychic exited the room, trailing an anxious Dr. Alam behind him.

“Hmm. I guess we’ll see.”

Strand was already ignoring him. His phone was ringing. He lifted a hand to Dr. Alam, and the other man answered readily enough with a wave goodbye, but exited the room shaking his head as though Strand were a student he couldn’t quite get to play nicely with the other children. He closed the door behind him, just as Strand snatched up his cell phone and answered without looking at the caller.

“Hello, this is Richard Strand.”

“Dr. Strand,” his assistant, Ruby Carver, greeted neutrally. 

“Good morning, Ruby.”

“Dr. Strand, is there something you want to tell me?”

Strand frowned. Ruby wasn’t one for games. She was usually straightforward to a fault.

“Nothing comes to mind, no.”

“You sure about that?

“Quite certain. What is this about, Ruby?”

She blew out a long breath on the other end of the line.

“You know, you send me random texts a lot. At all hours. Like, I’m perfectly used to getting messages to schedule last minute trips to Johannesburg, or you asking me to go to an old mansion three counties over to pick up some super important book that you need ‘urgently’ for research. And that’s fine. I’m prepared for that.

“What I am not prepared for,” she continued, an odd tone to her voice that he couldn’t place, “is checking my phone at 6:00 AM to see that you’ve sent me five reasons that I am not allowed to get involved with Alex Reagan.”

His stomach immediately dropped.

“You’re not serious.”

“Oh, _yes,”_ Ruby drawled with relish. His assistant was proficient at nearly everything she did; unfortunately for him, that included mockery of his follies. “I’ll admit, I was kind of confused by the first point. I mean, Ms. Reagan and I have a professional relationship, I guess, but I have to say, I’m not real worried about jeopardizing it.” 

“I—“

“And then you went all ‘She’s just not that into you’, which frankly, was a little presumptuous on your part.” 

“Look—”

“The age difference thing though, I feel like that’s a weak argument. I mean, Alex isn’t _that_ much older than me,” Ruby paused, as if doing some quick math. “I think we could make it work.”

“Ruby?”

“Yes sir?”

“I don’t suppose you could…forget you ever saw that?”

“It’s burned into my retinas, sir.”

He sighed deeply, lifting his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“Is there some kind of monetary incentive I could offer to ensure that this never gets brought up?”

“Oh, I was planning on turning this in for a million dollars. I have worked for you for three years, and I have never seen more compelling proof of the supernatural.”

A few short months ago, Richard Strand had not believed in hell, but now he did. It was this moment, on an endless loop. He could have added a line to Sartre— _'Hell is other people'…other people who know your most embarrassing secrets._

 _“Ruby.”_ Finally, there was quiet on the other side of the line. Strand scrubbed a hand down his face, slowly. Sadly, it did not manage to wipe away his utter mortification. “It was a silly little note. Something to pass the time. I’m sorry that I sent to you by mistake.”

She was quiet for a worryingly long moment.

“Was it?”

Strand remained silent. Ruby was a difficult person to lie to. 

“Do you remember agreeing to Alex’s interview? How we got dragged into this Black Tapes-ghost-hunting-podcast mess the first place?” she asked him.

“I seem to recall eleven messages,” he answered wryly, unable to keep the shadow of affection from leaking into his voice. 

“Yes. _Eleven._ I begged you to call her back, just so me and Mel could finally get some peace and quiet.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that she’s relentless. She’ll push until you crack. And…look, I’m just saying Dr. Strand, with you? Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”

Strand’s eyes widened in surprise. He actually pulled his phone away to stare at it for a moment before resettling it against his ear.

“I thought you didn’t like her?”

Ruby paused; clearly she was making some effort to think before she spoke. When she answered, her tone had settled into her more academic one, the one she used when giving him her opinion on an essay or when outlining a proposal for the Institute.

“I find Alex Reagan unpredictable and unsettling. That doesn’t necessarily mean I have a problem with her. It’s just, I know you don’t want to hear it, but…I worry.”

He sighed, pressing even harder against the bridge of his nose.

“Well, as you have seen, there is nothing to worry about. I’m fully aware that it will never work, Ruby. Sometimes we all have…passing fancies.” 

“Sir?” Ruby’s voice had gentled now, and he found that far more concerning than her sarcasm. “In three years, how many debates do you imagine I’ve helped you prepare for?”

Strand frowned. This conversation had taken an odd turn. 

“I’m not certain. Two dozen, perhaps more.”

“So I know a thing or two about your style of argument, how you prepare. And I know that you don’t make notes when you’re debating something. Not unless you think the other side is capable of making good points. Not unless, despite all your usual arguments about what’s logical and reasonable, you think you might lose. And Dr. Strand…you made a list.”

“I—suppose I did.”

“Right.” Ruby sighed. “Just, be careful, okay? That’s all I’m asking.” And with that his assistant, fond of the last word and never one to let a conversation stretch on unnecessarily, abruptly hung up.

Strand sank back into his chair.

He’d always prided himself on trying to face facts. Even when they didn’t allow him much room for hope, even when he’d rather to ignore what was _likely_ in favor of what he _desired,_ he tried to be honest with himself and others. So there, in the privacy of his office—a veritable temple to truth and data—Dr. Richard Strand struggled to come to terms with the facts before him: not with the prospect that he was currently falling in love with Alex Reagan. 

But rather, the strong possibility that he already had. 

_Disaster_ no longer began to cover it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween my fellow Apopheniacs! I'm on a roll with this fic and am so excited to get to share another chapter. Please let me know what you think!
> 
> *The line Strand is referencing in his thoughts during his conversation with Ruby is "Hell is other people," a frequently quoted line from Jean Paul Sarte's existentialist play, _No Exit_
> 
> \--Penny


	5. Insufferable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Just promise me that if the Seattle police call you later tonight looking for the body of a Dr. Richard Strand, you’ll delay long enough to let me get out of the country.”

Alex tried to navigate the crowd, slipping between bodies as she searched out her quarry. On the wall in front of her, a giant mermaid clutched twin green tails. Personally, she preferred more hole-in-the-wall coffee joints just for the sake of ambiance, but a chain place would do in a pinch; if the place sold caffeine, she was for it. She caught sight of a man of above-average height and golden brown curls standing next to a display of Seattle-themed thermoses and waltzed over to meet him. He turned just as she approached—a psychic’s sense, or good peripheral vision?

“Hi! It’s good to see you.”

“Likewise,” Tannis Braun greeted, clasping Alex’s hand firmly in his. “Coffee first, or…?”

She grinned.

“I think my body has more coffee than blood in it at this point, but yeah, I’ll get an espresso.”

They fell into the line, which wasn’t too terrible for a cafe this close to a university campus. Tannis ordered some kind of chai tea drink that she suspected Strand would like, as well as a warm slice of chocolate cake that looked like heaven. Then they grabbed a two-seater table and sat down. Of course, Alex didn’t have her recorder—it had been confiscated by Nic before she’d left the studio—but she made do, getting Braun’s permission to record and setting her phone on the table between them.

“So, Mr. Braun, how have you been?” Alex asked once they were comfortably seated. “Any more detective work since the Torres case?”

“Please, call me Tannis.” He took a sip of his tea, frowning when it burned his lips. He shot her a self-deprecating grin. “Yes, there’ve been a few cases. Most of them ended well. Not all, sadly.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Part of the job.” He shrugged. 

“Being a psychic isn’t all it’s cut out to be, I guess?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Tannis answered thoughtfully. “I’ve never been anything else.” He popped the top off his cup and blew on the liquid, trying to cool it down.

“It’s funny that you called,” Alex began.

“Is it?”

“Yeah. It is. I’ve been wanting to ask you a bit more about what you said when we met. In that cabin. When you said there was…something bad?”

“Yes,” Tannis answered with a sigh. “I got your emails.”

“You didn’t answer them.”

He winced, but with good humor.

“Ouch. You don’t pull any punches, do you?”

Alex met his eyes with a wide grin. 

“Afraid not.”

He sighed and set his hands on the table, steepling his fingers together. 

“I was reluctant to discuss it. That wasn’t…” Tannis frowned, clearly trying to put words together. “I’m not a superstitious man, Miss Reagan. I know I believe in psychic abilities, but I’m not burning sage sticks in my spare time. That said.” He paused, clearly unsure how to put this. “I sensed a very _dark_ presence in that room. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before. And I can imagine that that sounds like all the mumbo-jumbo that I’m sure a couple of years working closely with Strand has made you suspicious of, but it’s true. In my work with the police, I’ve spoken with more murderers than I can count—both those who acted once in anger and those who planned in it, who reveled in the killing. Those attitudes leave a sort of psychic trace, a negative one. I thought I’d felt the worst of the worst, but whatever was in that cabin…well, I don’t know what to call it other than just, _evil.”_

Alex nodded encouragingly.

“Demonic,” he finished. When he looked up at her, his expression was rueful. “I get the sense that I’m not telling you much you don’t already know.”

She shrugged. “Well, you know, demon-worshipping apocalyptic death cults are kind of every other Tuesday for me, these days. I just wanted to hear what your take had been.”

At that, Tannis glanced sharply into her eyes. 

“Something’s wrong.”

Alex’s chair was scraping back and she was rising to her feet before she knew what was happening. She looked down to see Tannis’ surprised face staring up at her.

“I meant, with you, Alex. Something’s wrong with you.”

Alex sank back into her chair with a huff, her fingers shaking against the green slate table top.

“Too much caffeine?” she tried. Tannis ignored this. He closed his eyes.

“Something’s happened to you, recently,” he continued. Sliding one of his hands forward, he reached for her own. “Do you mind?”

“Oh, um…sure?” Tentatively, Alex placed her hand in his. Tannis’ brows furrowed in concentration, his thumb running back and forth over the back of her palm. Alex thought of yesterday, when Richard had taken her hand, had held it tight until she had let go.

“You’re frightened by something, something specific. Your peace has been…violated. Something has intruded into your personal space.”

“Okay. That’s…true.”

“You’re frightened what happened, but there’s more. This new threat is brushing against a much older emotional scar.”

Alex blinked at him owlishly, surprised.

“Oookay, Tannis, I’ll be honest. You’re freaking me out a little.”

Tannis opened his eyes. 

“Sorry.” He grinned. “But was I right?”

“You’re right,” she admitted reluctantly. She wondered if Richard would be right in calling that a con artist’s trick. Her phone buzzed with a text, and she reached for it, not wanting it to keep vibrating. That would mean extra time for her editing this sound clip. “I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to be rude,” she assured him as she scanned the message. “Sorry, it’s Strand. He’s just checking in. I’ve gotten like 4 texts from Nic already today, after everything.”

 _Everything alright?_ Richard asked. Alex tried to work up a little righteous indignation that he and Nic felt like they had to treat her like a package marked ‘Extra Fragile’, but she couldn’t help but appreciate that they were taking time out of their day to make sure she was okay. She tapped off a quick message back.

_At Starbucks. The one by the university. Grabbing coffee, but I’m heading back to the house soon._

She looked up as she set her phone back down on the table.

“After everything?”

“Um, I had a little situation with a break in at my apartment. Some vandalism. Not really a good time.”

“I’m so sorry,” he replied, sounding genuinely concerned. “That must be awful. Did you have to get a hotel?”

“Oh, uh, no. I’m staying with Richard, actually. Dr. Strand,” she tacked onto the end, as though he didn’t know who Richard was. She wanted to smack herself in the face. _Be cool, Reagan._

Tannis didn’t comment, he just smiled enigmatically and motioned towards his slice of cake, which he’d barely taken a bite of. “Do you want some? You’re looking a bit peaky.” He reached back towards the Napkins/Creamer/Etc. station behind him and procured a second spoon, holding it out to her. The cake did look pretty delicious.

“Sure, thanks.” She dug in to the side nearest her enthusiastically, her eyes fluttering shut as the taste of warm, gooey chocolate hit her tastebuds. “Oh yum.”

“Right?” Tannis agreed, taking a bite from his end of the cake.

“You know, you were right. All that ‘I sense a darkness’ stuff was exactly what Strand would say was, well…”

“Mumbo-jumbo.”

“Sure. We’ll go with that.”

Tannis chuckled. 

“He has a point. Among those with higher cognitive and prescient functions, it can be pretty hard to tell the fakers from the real deal. I believe that with careful study, we can work towards honing our psychic skills toward the more specific, but Parapsychology is a vague field on the whole.”

“Yeah. That’s exactly the kind of explanation he doesn’t like.”

“It’s not just the explanation he doesn’t like. With Strand, I suspect the issue is more…personal.”

Alex raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean? That he just dislikes you, personally? He doesn’t. I mean, he’s that way towards everyone who believes in all this stuff.” She thought about Strand’s careful distinction; how he seemed to have far more respect for Tannis than he did for Emily Dumont, but how Tannis’ presence seemed to unnerve him more, nonetheless. “Well, maybe not _just_ like that.”

“Oh, no. I don’t think Strand hates me. He’s been more polite to me in the past than to many others in our corner of academia. But he keeps his distance, as you know.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Well, I’ve developed a new theory. I haven’t listened to all your episodes, but I’ll confess, I’ve tuned into a few.”

“That’s nice to hear.”

“And I heard what Dr. Strand said, about the…other reason he founded his institute. The incident. After his wife disappeared.”

“When he tried to find Coralee,” Alex added solemnly. Tannis nodded.

“But he didn’t find her, did he? Even though he believed as a younger man that he’d had some sort of psychic ability. And that gave me a certain level of insight, I think, into why he fears me.”

“Fears you?”

“Yes. I used to think it was because he was unnerved that I explained my theories of Parapsychology with actual scientific language and data, but that never quite rang true. Now I understand that Strand is afraid that I will recognize him as a fellow psychic.”

“What, but why…?” Alex trailed off, Tannis’ implications finally dawning on her. “Because if he really did have some kind of, some kind of _ability,_ then…then he failed to find her.”

“And then it would be his fault,” Tannis finished. “In his mind, I mean. As I understand it, his wife was initially taken by people who dabble in the paranormal, anyway. There are ways to hide someone from an experienced psychic, even a more seasoned one like myself. Strand already had begun his research into the paranormal back then—anyone who was kidnapping his wife would have known that he had connections he could call on, even if they didn’t think he had some kind of psychic aptitude. I doubt there was anything he could have done.

“I think that’s why he dislikes me,” Tannis continued. “Not that I haven’t baited him on occasion, to be fair. The man can be insufferable.”

Alex laughed, but said nothing. Tannis raised an eyebrow.

“I gather that you don’t find him insufferable?”

Alex tried, very hard, not to blush. She took another sip of her coffee. The heat creeping into her cheeks was because she was ingesting a hot liquid. For sure.

“Aha,” Tannis exclaimed with a gleam in his eye. “I see how it is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, Alex, please. You’re going to have to do better than that. I’m literally a psychic.” Suddenly, he glanced up, looking towards the door. “Speak of the devil.”

Alex, who had a spoonful of cake halfway to her mouth, dropped it to the plate and turned to look over her shoulder. Strand was walking in, peering at the various tables. When he spotted her, his expression brightened—she didn’t think she was imagining it. Waving her free hand, Alex called out to him,

“Dr. Strand! I didn’t realize you were coming by.”

“I thought I’d—”. His eyes tracked past her and took in who she was sitting with. “What are you doing here?” he asked flatly. Tannis Braun appeared undaunted. 

“Alex has apparently been wanting to sit down with me for some time. She’d sent several emails, and since I was in the area I thought I’d call her up.”

“I see.” He glared at the scene—the cups on the table, the cake with two spoons, her hand still resting on Tannis’ palm. 

He turned cold eyes on the psychic. 

“Strand—”

“I think you should leave,” he all but growled. Alex stood up, pivoting to face Richard.

“What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I just believe that Mr. Braun has somewhere else to be.”

“Nowhere in particular,” Tannis chimed in, his arms folded behind his head. He seemed more than a little amused. Alex’s eyes tracked back and forth between them.

“It would be in your best interest,” he intoned, his voice dark, “to head back to campus. There’s a classroom full of minds just waiting to hear your tall tales. You’re not wanted here.”

Alex spun towards Tannis. “Excuse us for a moment.” She then grabbed Strand by the elbow and dragged him a few feet away.

“What are you doing?” she hissed. Dr. Strand’s feet were planted firmly, the furrow between his brows signaling resolute obstinacy.

“Braun is nothing but a con artist—”

“It wasn’t that long ago that you told me that you ‘didn’t not like him’!” Alex exclaimed.

“That was different.”

“How?”

Strand crossed his arms, his jaw set stubbornly. He didn’t answer. Alex propped her hands on her hips and made a studied effort at keeping her voice down.

“I cannot believe you talked to him like that. This is so unprofessional.”

“Really? This is a professional situation?” 

“It just sort of came up. I’ve been wanting to talk to Tannis again for a while, now, so I wasn’t going to say no.”

“Oh, of course not.”

“Why are you _being_ like this?”

“I’m not aware that I’m being like anything.”

“Why are you so upset?”

“I’m just surprised to see you having lunch with a charlatan—“

“You don’t really think Tannis is a charlatan.”

“Alright, fine, so he may actually believe what he says. That’s not _less_ troubling.”

“Look. I can’t deal with you right now. I need to get back over there.”

She began making her way back toward the table where Tannis was waiting, pretending not to be watching their argument, when she felt pressure on her elbow. Strand’s hand was there, not physically restraining her, just a request to look at him. Alex complied.

“What?”

“It’s just—Braun—I don’t trust…his intentions may not be…professional in nature.”

“Are yours?”

Strand dropped his hand and she didn’t turn to look at him. Alex wasn’t sure how he’d interpret her words. She’d meant them as a critique of his actions in this moment—was he even trying to be an adult? But he might also take them as a question of his _intentions,_ of the weird energy between them that she’d sometimes swear wasn’t just in her head. But there was no time to worry over him now. Alex marched back to the small table and Tannis stood up.

“I think I’ve overstayed my welcome,” he announced as she approached.

“Not from me.”

“All the same, I have another lecture to give in,” he glanced at his watch, “forty-five minutes. I should head back. It’s not about Strand,” he assured her. “I’d have had to leave anyway, I promise.”

“Then I guess this interview is over.” Alex sighed and plucked her phone off the table, turning off the recording app. Together, they headed out the door; she could sense Strand trailing behind them at a distance.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Tannis offered, and Alex nodded, turning her back firmly on Dr. Strand, who was left standing on the pavement beneath the emerald green awning. Tannis strode beside her, turning to stare at the white puffs of air she was emitting in frustration. Despite his longer legs, he had to move quickly to keep up with her furious pace, her steps flying past the yellow lines of the parking lot. “You’re angry.”

“I see why you’re a psychic,” she retorted, deadpan. As they approached the bright, sunshine yellow car—easy to find in any environment—they slowed to a halt. Alex ran a hand over her face. “I’m so sorry. That was so unprofessional. And embarrassing. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

Tannis gave a small, secretive smile.

“I think I do.”

“Well, naturally. Can you read his mind? Assure me that brain activity is happening right now?”

“I feel fairly certain it is.” Tannis peered over her head, and she knew that he was looking at Strand. She refused to look. “Go easy on him, maybe?” Alex shot him a glare and he raised his hands in surrender, grinning. “Sorry, none of my business at all.”

“Just promise me that if the Seattle police call you later tonight looking for the body of a Dr. Richard Strand, you’ll delay long enough to let me get out of the country.”

Tannis chuckled. “I promise.” He leaned down and, to Alex’s surprise, kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll text you next time I’m in town. We can make another attempt at this interview thing.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Alex agreed, then got in her car and zipped out of the parking lot, careful not to glance in Strand’s direction even once.

 

*****  
Strand was already feeling the roiling sensation in his stomach that indicated that, in a moment, he was going to feel very ashamed of his actions. Then he saw Braun kiss Alex.

 _Kiss_ her.

It was like a punch to the gut. It was anger and jealousy and worry and…far too many emotions to process in the moment. Anger was what won out, but he had to try to control himself. Alex was already livid with him. She would not thank him for punching Braun in his charming, self-satisfied face, no matter how much he wanted to do so.

When Braun’s rental car—a pale beige sedan—rolled over to where Strand stood outside the coffee shop and slid down a window, though, he wasn’t certain of how well he’d be able to hold the urge in check. 

“Strand,” the other man greeted. Casually. As if this were an ordinary conversation.

“I really don’t wish to speak to you right now,” Strand gritted out, hearing the words emerge from between his teeth. 

Braun cocked his head, as if catching the tenor of Strand’s thoughts.

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Well what do you think it is I’d like to say?”

“I think you’d like to tell me, in no uncertain terms, to stay the hell away from Alex. Probably with a lot of curse words. Some in languages I haven’t heard of. But that’s just my guess.”

Strand said nothing. Braun leaned an elbow across his rolled-down window.

“The real question is, what claim do you have on her that gives you the right to tell me to stay away from her?”

“I don’t,” he ground out irritably.

“Well then…”

“There is no claim I could make—no claim that anyone could make—on Miss Reagan that would give them the right to control who enters her company. It’s her decision. I suspect she will always be entering the company of people I’d prefer she never meet; it’s part of her job.”

Braun’s mouth quirked.

“Very enlightened of you. But I asked about what you'd _like_ to say.”

He’d like to tell Braun that if he ever saw the man’s hand holding Alex’s again, he would break it. He wanted to punch him right in the smirking mouth that had just kissed her cheek. Strand might be an academic, but he was reasonably fit; he could throw a punch if the occasion demanded it.

But he wouldn’t. If Alex had wanted to punch Braun for taking liberties, she would have done so—she was more than capable. Which meant that he would not, no matter how much satisfaction it might give him. 

But he still very, very much wanted to. 

“I’m not going to waste my time with a long litany of threats,” he answered at last. “However, I can assure you that if you attempt manipulate Miss Reagan’s emotions in any way, as people of your profession generally do, then you will not want to meet the consequences.”

“I have no intention of manipulating _Alex.”_ Braun smirked. “You, on the other hand…”

“Do not flatter yourself to think that you can manipulate me, Braun.”

The other man shrugged, reaching down to shift gears, though he remained braked in front of Strand.

“Consider the possibility that I already have. Hopefully it puts you both out of your misery.”

“What are you talking about?” Strand snapped.

“You should tell her how you feel.”

Strand took a step back, his jaw clenched, eyes widening.

“If it wasn’t obvious before that little scene in there, it should be now. Still, you could have handled that a bit better; she’s quite upset with you. I’d suggest a ‘grand gesture’ sort of apology.” Braun shook his head ruefully. “You may not believe me, Strand, but I actually like you, for some bizarre reason.” Digging out his wallet, he pulled out a small white piece of card stock, holding it out. On pure reflexive instinct, Strand took the card. “In case you ever need anything.”

With that, Braun was gone, the beige rental proceeding at a much more respectable pace than Alex’s and turning out of the lot. Strand stalked to his own vehicle, Braun’s card crumpled in his fist, and tossed it to the floor. He started to shift into reverse and paused, the image of Alex’s confused, furious expression swimming before him.

He was an idiot. 

An idiot who was, doubtless, in a great deal of trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay on this chapter. I just needed some time, after the finale, to figure out my direction. I'm still trying to decide if I'd like to incorporate those events, or go my own way entirely. We shall see! 
> 
> I know a lot of us - myself included - are disappointed in the way the show ended. Or "ended" (I'm not convinced that that was the real ending, but perhaps I'm an optimist; time will tell). However, it's been a wonderful ride along the way, and even if I'm not thrilled with every aspect of the way things wrapped, I am grateful to the creators of The Black Tapes for giving me such fun material to play with! 
> 
> Please let me know what you think of the chapter! Thanks for all the support! :)
> 
> \--Penny


	6. An Apology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve never known a kiss to be ‘professional’.”

Alex arrived back at Strand’s, slamming the doors to both car and house _hard,_ as though it could make him feel the force of her ire. It couldn’t; his car hadn’t been behind hers on the way back. If he knew what was good for him, he wouldn’t be coming home for a good long time.

Storming into the old Victorian, Alex found herself with entirely too much kinetic energy. She was jumpy, from anger, from caffeine, from residual fear from her ill-advised apartment visit earlier in the afternoon. She was overwhelmed by the feeling that she had to _do_ something and her instincts were veering towards destruction. As she glanced around the room, everything was a potential victim—there were two Black Tapes sitting on top of the VCR, and she couldn’t help thinking about how utterly _satisfying_ it would be to smash open the black casing, to pull apart the dark strips of film and leave the plastic VHS behind, disemboweled, as a warning.

But that would be a touch extreme.

A part of her mind was still flirting with the idea. She could push Strand’s mug off the side table, or remove all his bookmarks and annotated notecards from the stack of books by the armchair.

Alex leaned back against the front door and sighed as she slid down to the floor. Okay, she was down to fantasizing about hiding Strand’s bookmarks—the worst of the storm was probably over.

Still, why would he be such a jerk? _No._ Asshole, _Alex. You’re off the air, this is your own mind, and he was being an asshole._

If she could understand it, maybe that would be one thing. Alex was good at understanding people; her intuition and ability to read others were some of her greatest assets as a reporter, but damn it all if Richard Strand didn’t throw her off every time. They could be having a perfectly pleasant morning—he could be so sweet, even going so far as to get up early and get her coffee just because he knew how much she loved it. But the next thing she knew, he’d have gone cold and distant, leaving her in the dust. Add to that his completely bonkers behavior in front of Tannis, and Alex was confused, angry, and in desperate need of an outlet for her emotions. 

Suddenly, an idea struck her, and Alex didn’t waste any time. She thundered up the stairs and up to the guest room that Strand had tried—and failed—to clean out for her, and spun around slowly, taking in the complete disarray. This. This could keep her occupied for a few hours. 

 

The doorbell rang thirty minutes later. Alex hesitated, unsure if she should really answer Strand’s door, but in the end she was too curious to leave well enough alone—story of her life. Sweeping down the stairs, she paused in the hall to catch a glimpse of herself in a speckled mirror. She looked as though she’d been baking (ha!), her face and green shirt liberally smeared with white dust. She sighed. Well, nothing for it. She pulled the door open and was immediately enveloped by grasping arms. 

“Arghhh!”

“Calm down, Alexandra. It is a hug, not a murder attempt.”

Alex stilled and brushed her hair out of her eyes. 

“Oh. Amalia. I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Good. I would not like to become predictable.” Amalia sailed past Alex and into the house. Alex shut the door behind her.

“I thought I would come to see where you were staying. I was curious,” Amalia explained, shrugging off her jacket and tossing it onto the coat rack by the door. 

“Is that code for ‘Nic asked you to come check on me?’”

“Meh.” Amalia shrugged one shoulder, which as far as Alex was concerned meant _yes,_ and wandered further into the house, her boots sinking into the Persian rug which, in this house, was probably actually from Persia. “Where is your Dr. Strand?”

“He’’s not _my_ Dr. Strand,” Alex snipped. “And he’s not here. I don’t know where he is.”

Amalia turned from her perusal of the curio cabinet in the foyer, raising a perfectly plucked eyebrow in interest.

“Do I get the sense that Strand has left you somewhat irritated?”

“He’s a stupid, high handed idiot,” Alex huffed, marching up the stairs, back towards the room she was cleaning. Amalia paused on the stairwell, which spiraled up to the second floor, but in squares instead of circles.

“A stupid idiot,” she repeated, bemused. “He _is_ in trouble, isn’t he?”

Alex kept walking and Amalia trailed after her.

“Oh, he isn’t the only one in trouble,” she informed her friend, turning down the hallway and shoving the door to the guest room open. 

Amalia eyed the room skeptically. “Charming.”

Alex tossed a dust rag in her direction and it landed on Amalia’s shoulder like a pirate’s deflated parrot. She propped her hands on her hips.

“If you’re going to come in here and pry into my personal life, you can at least make yourself useful,” she informed her. “Frankly, I’m still pissed about the Great Duffle Bag Debacle of 2017.”

“Oh, to be a fly on that wall…” Amalia mused, but she plucked the rag off her shoulder and snatched a can of Pledge off the dark wooden chest of drawers, spraying it onto the cloth and setting into the fight against the grimy patina coating the wood. “So, what has happened?”

“I had coffee with Tannis Braun.”

Alex flung open the curtains on the window, tossing motes that hovered like golden specks into the air, then she walked back to the bureau she had been working on, yanking a drawer open and wiping it down with a vengeance.

“The psychic?”

“Allegedly,” Alex answered, and was immediately irritated at herself for giving such a Strand-like response. “And then next thing I know Strand is bursting into the coffee shop, picking a fight with Braun. Like an idiot. It was so…rude!” she fumed. 

Amalia clucked her tongue, scrubbing at a particularly stubborn bit of grime with her rag. 

“Mmm. And this coffee. Was it an interview?”

“Yes! I was mortified. It was the least professional thing in the world.”

“The least professional thing in the world…” Amalia mused. “Are you certain?”

Alex’s mind flashed back to several recent exchanges between Strand and herself that could, arguably, be considered less professional than that. She flushed.

“Also,” Amalia continued. “You do recall that you were specifically banned from interviews, yes?”

“I recall,” Alex bit out, slamming a drawer shut and pulling open another. She dumped the contents—a moth-eaten pile of handkerchiefs—onto the floor. 

“So Dr. Strand would not have expected that you were doing an interview. Since you were not meant to be doing them in the first place.”

“I guess.”

“So perhaps,” Amalia pointed out, crouching down to eye the preserved elephant’s foot distastefully, “it would have looked like something else, from his perspective.”

“Like what?”

Amalia shot her a disdainful look, clearly refusing to do all the mental heavy-lifting. Alex gave it some consideration. What else would she be doing with Tannis, sitting at a coffee table, talking…

Oh.

“A date.”

“What is it you Americans are always saying? The game that is for the very old people?”

“Um, bingo?”

“That!”

“Well, even if it was a date that would…I mean, why would he—you think…he was jealous?”

Amalia rolled her eyes. Very emphatically.

“I am picturing you as you are on an interview. You engage people, hang on their every word. It occurs to me that if I walked in on someone looking like that, I might assume….” She shrugged.

Alex considered that for a moment. Richard Strand, jealous. Over her. 

With most men, that would make her uncomfortable. Alex wasn’t one to put up with possessiveness, not after the things she had dealt with in life. But still. With Richard it felt…different.

“I don’t know, I’m still just so…gah!” she exclaimed in irritation.

“That is fine. You can be angry with him. It might be good.”

“Good?”

“It might force the two of you to deal with your emotions.”

“What, by screaming at one another? Yeah, that’ll help.”

Amalia grinned wickedly. “No, not as much. But I think the angry hate sex might be beneficial.”

“Amalia!” Alex tossed another rag at her friend and slapped a hand over her mouth, trying to contain the giggles. The other woman waggled her eyebrows.

“Protest all you want my friend, but you have to admit—“

“I have to admit nothing,” Alex argued. She was still angry with Strand, but the weight on her chest felt lighter. Amalia collapsed dramatically onto an armchair.

“And if you would stop putting off the inevitable, we wouldn’t have to clean out a whole second bedroom for you.” Another rag went flying, this time hitting Amalia in the face, and Alex gave a satisfied grunt.

“Less whining, more dusting, Chenkova.”

 

*****

It was getting late in the afternoon, and in the dim light of evening Strand’s office looked even more unfriendly than usual. When his phone lit up, he grabbed it quickly. It wasn’t Alex—of course it wasn’t, he ought to have known. Oddly enough, it was Nic.

_so i see you have fucked things up._

Strand’s eyebrows soared to the top of his forehead.

_I beg your pardon?_

_Mffgeadeeeeadf_

_What?_ he typed, confused. He had fucked things up, of course, but it wasn’t like Nic to get involved.

The three dots that indicated the other correspondent was typing hovered on the screen for a long moment.

_Sorry, Strand. Amalia stole my phone._

Oh. Well at least that made sense. Then suddenly there was another stream of senseless letters. He wondered if the two of them were literally grappling over a cell phone. 

_Sdfadfllll. Gvvvvefreasdttttt_

_she is very angry, and for a smart man you are very stupid._

Amalia again, presumably. Strand sighed—he couldn’t very well argue.

_it is her birthday tomorrow. so you should hurry up and fix things, yes?_

There was a pause, another ellipse took up the screen, and suddenly a blue ‘play’ button appeared in the text. A voice recording. Strand hit the button.

 

_“Amalia, I swear if you don’t give that back—”_

_“You can have it back in a minute. I am talking to the idiot doctor.”_

_“Can’t you just stay out of it?”_

_“I do not want to stay out of it. Alex is upset and he needs to fix it.”_

_“I’m sure he knows that.”_

_“You know how she is, Nic. She deserves something good after what happened before.”_

_“And how do you know he’ll be good for her? Honestly I have my doubts.”_

_“I have good instincts.”_

_“Amalia, are you even paying attention to what buttons you’re pressing? Shit.”_

 

With that, the recording ended.

A few second later, his screen brightened again.

_Um. Sorry. —Nic_

Strand groaned, lifting his glasses so that he could scrub at his eyes. He was obvious enough in his affections that Alex’s best friends were arguing over whether or not they’d be good together? The answer to which was clearly no—his idiocy today had made it abundantly clear that he was a complete madman around Alex. He never had been able to love by halves. Not that that was any excuse.

All the same, there was one question that needed to be answered. Somewhat reluctantly, he typed back.

_Is it truly Alex’s birthday tomorrow?_

_Um, yeah. Did she not tell you?_

She had not. Of course, between the trauma of yesterday, the fight today, and their avoidance of each other in the previous weeks, he wasn’t certain when she would have had the chance.

He found himself dialing before he really knew what he was doing.

 

“Dr. Strand?” Ruby’s voice sounded in his ear. He cleared his throat.

“Yes, I…yes, it’s me.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Not really,” he admitted. Ruby was the closest thing he had to family these days, and she could sniff out dishonesty like a bloodhound.

“Oh, let me guess,” she drawled. “It’s Alex.” She seemed to take his silence as confirmation. “Let me guess again - she’s flown off to meet another mass murderer, this time atop Mt. Everest. Or, no, she went to demand answers from the sherif and now you need me to get her out on bail?”

“No, I’m afraid it’s Miss Reagan’s turn to be exasperated with me, today.” He paused. “Ruby, were you aware that tomorrow is Miss Reagan’s birthday?”

“Oh, Dr. Strand, when are you going to learn that I know all?”

“Of course you do,” he muttered.

“I’m guessing you’re looking for a gift.”

“Yes, except I’m not certain exactly what I should…”

“Well, you screwed up right?”

“Pardon?”

“You said she was mad at you,” Ruby explained, her tone more than a bit exasperated. “So I’m assuming you screwed up.”

He wondered if he should be surprised by how quickly Ruby, for all her loyalty, jumped ship on him in this instance. He was not. If anyone knew the precise depths of Richard Strand’s failings at interpersonal interactions, it was his assistant.

“I…yes, alright, I screwed up.”

“So you need to get her something good.”

“Ruby, are you suggesting that I buy my way into Alex’s affections?”

“No, sir. I’m suggesting that you decide if you’re really doing this or not.”

“What do you mean by ‘this’?”

She huffed in utter disdain.

“Okay, I’m gonna rephrase. You should stop being all hot and cold with her all the time; clearly you’re _super_ into her.” Ruby’s accompanying eye roll was audible. “So, not that I approve of this, but if you actually want to fix things with you two, you need to put aside your pride and get her something thoughtful that will mean a lot to her, so that she’ll know that _she_ means a lot to _you.”_

“That was…very insightful, Ruby.”

“Yeah, I try.”

He tapped his foot thoughtfully, wondering if he could possibly pull this off.

“Well, I did have something in mind. But I’m worried it might be a bit presumptuous.”

“Sounds perfect.”

 

*****  


Alex opened her eyes to the sound of a light tapping on the guest room door. She hadn’t been asleep—not really. The house felt lonely without Strand there, but she hadn’t wanted to go downstairs and turn on the TV, even if the white noise would have been comforting. Instead, she’d come upstairs and tried to get into the silly romance novel Amalia had left as one of her birthday presents. She could tell that it was good, probably even funny, but had tossed it aside at some point. She kept getting distracted by the shadows in the room and, besides, she wasn’t really in the mood to read about the type of people who wound up with happily-ever-after-type romances.

The tapping stopped and Alex sat up. It was probably Strand. He probably wanted to talk about what had happened earlier, and she should probably let him. It would be the mature, adult thing to do, and she was turning 32 in - she glanced at the glowing red digits on the bedside clock - an hour and fifteen minutes. She should be a mature adult. 

She sat up and lifted her hands to smooth her hair, but that was pointless, piled into a messy bun as it was. Her hands fell down to try to brush the wrinkles out of her shirt when she realized what she was wearing - an oversized Yale sweatshirt, stolen from the neatly folded pile in Strand’s laundry room. She’d thrown on that and a pair of athletic shorts from her bag after she’d showered off the dust from her clean-a-thon, and her feet were bare, since she’d been letting the nail polish Amalia had brought with her dry. Amalia was like a magpie, always leaving behind shiny, interesting, or embarrassing things with the people she liked. A draft came in from the direction of the room’s only window and Alex shivered. Really, she needed to snag herself another pair of socks as well. She wondered if she could reasonably yell at Richard Strand while she was wearing his clothes, taken from him without his permission.

She decided she could.

With a groan, she shoved herself to her feet and shuffled to the door, nearly tripping as she belatedly remembered the still-open jar of nail polish sitting on the hardwood.

The knocking sound came from the door again, gentle but firm, clearly not going anywhere. Alex opened it a crack, quickly peering over her shoulder her to make sure that the embarrassing cover of her book was tucked safely beneath her blanket. It was. 

“Look, about earlier,” she began, turning back towards the door. She felt something skitter over her feet and jumped back, emitting a loud yelp. “What the—”

She looked down to find that there was something…some creature…sitting on the floor in front of her. Something with a snuffling nose, and silky ears, and a wildly waggling little tail. She dropped to her knees.

“Oh. Hi,” she greeted softly, extending her hand to be sniffed. When she was met with a warm lick, she reached out to stroke the animal’s cream colored coat, which was splotched all over with adorable patches of brown. Her hands stroked along its neck and found a bright red ribbon. For a moment the room blurred and Alex blinked the tears from her eyes. 

When she looked up, Richard was there, standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, looking as though he were braced for a storm.

“This…this is a puppy,” she accused, blotting her eyes with the back of her hand. Richard’s eyes widened at the sight of her tears, looking more than a little bit alarmed. 

“It is.”

“It’s—why is there a puppy?”

“I thought you might want one, for your birthday,” he explained, shifting slightly on his feet. “You’d been saying you wanted a dog. I suppose it was a bit presumptuous of me to choose one for you, and he is a mutt, but he seemed remarkably intelligent and friendly, so I thought you’d make a good pair. But if you don’t want him I—”

“I want him!”

Alex plucked the puppy off the ground and into her lap, hugging him closer. He was sooo soft. He put his paws up on her shoulders and reached up to lick her face, kissing her tears away. She giggled and pulled him into her arms, standing up and walking to the bed, where she deposited him on top of her pillow. The puppy, realizing a good situation when he saw it, plopped down immediately and burrowed into this new source of comfort. Alex hopped onto the bed next to the creature and settled down with her legs crossed beneath her, looking up at Richard, still lingering in the doorway. 

Swiveling her head from side to side, she searched for a chair or something, but there really was nowhere else to sit, so with a roll of her eyes she motioned the spot on the mattress next to her. He walked forward, still looking guarded, and leaned against the bed post.

“Richard?”

“Yes?”

“I’m still kind of mad at you, for this afternoon.”

He sighed deeply, running a hand through his hair.

“I was an ass. An especially hard-headed one. I’m sorry. Truly sorry.” He paused. “Do you think…can you forgive me?”

Alex’s hand stroked the soft fur of the puppy’s back and it gave an appreciative tail thump in response.

“No one has ever done anything this nice for me,” she informed him. “No one.”

“It’s nothing, Alex.”

She glanced sharply up at him. “It’s _not_ nothing. And I do forgive you. Not because you got me a dog, but because…”

“Because?”

“Because there are some people in life that are worth it, even when they do stupid things.”

“And I’m worth it?” he asked skeptically.

“Yes.” She said it quietly and firmly. She could list in a thousand ways the things that made him worth it, but not now. It really wasn’t the time, and anyway, she still didn’t quite understand why he had acted so different from his usual self, Amalia’s crazy theories notwithstanding. “But can you explain to me? What is it that had you so upset?”

Richard and reached out a hand to scratch at the puppy’s ears—it rolled onto its back, and he obliged it with the requested belly rubs. His mouth twisted into a wry grimace.

“I don’t really know what came over me. I just saw you there with Braun and I—I’m not fond of him.”

“No?” Alex surprised herself with a giggle. He narrowed his eyes at her and she attempted to school her expression into nonchalance, trying to keep herself from reacting to every little thing he said so that he could finish his explanation.

“No,” he answered. “And, its no excuse for my interrupting your interview, but I had seen him earlier and he had…mentioned you.”

“Did he?”

“Yes, in a somewhat…familiar fashion. I found it inappropriate and I, erm, I _may_ have implied that he should stay away from you.”

“Richard!” She was abruptly off the bed and standing, bristling, completely flabbergasted as she stared at him in total disbelief. “You didn’t!” _Aaand, there went the nonchalance._

He winced. “I know. It was childish of me, and I have no right to warn him away from you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“But,” he added petulantly, “in my defense—”

“Oh boy, what now?”

Richard spread his arms wide in supplication. 

“I mean, you cannot tell me that Braun was all innocence. I tell him to stay away from you and his immediate response is _that?”_

“Asking me to get coffee?”

“That was not just coffee, Alex.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I walked in, he was holding your hand. You were sharing a dessert. He kissed you!”

“On the cheek! It was a goodbye gesture.”

“Braun is from Boulder, not Barcelona,” he grumbled. “But I shouldn’t have said it, and I’m sorry.” The apology was muttered and his tone was still cross, but it was no less sincere.

Alex’s anger dissipated as she struggled to contain another laugh. Richard’s grumpiness had always amused her, rather than put her off. It was one of the reasons they usually got along so well. 

“And you were angry about this because…?”

“Well, I…I felt he was taking advantage of you in order to unnerve me. He’d implied as much this afternoon.”

“Tannis wasn’t taking advantage of me.”

“No?”

“No.” She thought back to what he had said about how he sometimes liked to bait Strand, just a little. “And even though it’s extremely self-centered of you to assume that he wanted to meet with me just to get to you, you may have a point.” 

Walking backwards, she pulled herself back up onto the bed again and leaned against her pillow, stroking the puppy’s fur. He let out an enormous yawn and his banner-like tail thumped against her arm. Turning, she smiled at Richard and patted the spot on the bed beside her. His face froze briefly, and for a moment he looked almost panicked, but in a blink the look was gone, as if she’d imagined it. Richard walked forward and sat on the very edge of the bed, one foot still touching the floor as though he was following TV censorship rules from 1950. 

Richard let out a deep breath. Alex waited. She was a reporter; it never stopped being hard for her, waiting someone out, staying quiet, but she knew how to use silence to her advantage. She leaned back against the pillows, looking up at the ceiling. The guest room was thoroughly clean now, but there was still an interestingly-shaped water stain on the ceiling. It looked a bit like a goat.

“Are—“ he began haltingly. “You and I, are we…alright?”

“We’re better than alright, Richard.”

“But you’re still angry with me?”

“Not really.” 

Somehow, in the last few minutes, the remains of her anger had melted away. His presence was so warm, sitting there next to her, inches from her skin. It wasn’t just physical. It was _him._ Richard. A man—or even just a person—who knew how to apologize, to admit that they’d messed up and to try to fix it, that was something special. And the fact that he had gotten her a dog just because he knew how badly she’d wanted one, even though it was in his house, bound to chew up all his things. She didn’t even know if Richard was a dog person, but he’d gotten one. For her. 

“What’re you thinking about?” she asked him. She heard him sigh and felt the weight on the bed shift as he lifted his other leg up, leaning back against the headboard.

“How glad I am that you aren’t angry with me, for one.” 

She laughed. “Was I scary?”

“Terrifying.” The corners of his eyes crinkled with amusement, though somehow she didn’t think he was kidding. “I’ve never seen a more forbidding face in my life. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to come home.”

“Really? What convinced you to face down such a terrifying creature as myself?”

“Regret, mostly. Well, that, and a generous glass of bourbon.”

Alex shifted an elbow in his direction and felt it connect. He grunted and grabbed her elbow, preventing it from doing any more damage

“I’m not kidding,” he informed her. “Ruby looked up several hotel options for me in case I, in her words, ‘royally screwed up this apology and got kicked out of my own house’”.

“I wouldn’t kick you out of your house,” Alex argued. He emitted a skeptical noise. “Permanently,” she amended. The low rumble of his laugh reverberated through the room, loosening her spine and wrapping her in comfort. He released his hold on her elbow and dropped his arm down to rest beside hers, right next to it. Holding her breath, Alex shifted her fingers closer, brushing against his palm once, twice. His fingers clasped around her own.

“I’m also thinking that this dog needs a name,” he informed her, as though nothing had happened. His index finger began tracing the outside of her hand, slowly, and Alex felt a shiver run through the whole of her body, warmth flowing through her in waves like one too many glasses of wine.

“I’m terrible at naming things,” she informed him, but her voice wasn’t coming out completely evenly. “We can think of a name tomorrow.”

“Alright,” he agreed. His fingertip trailed across her lifeline, his grip loosening.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” Alex blurted, and Richard stilled. She wanted to keep him here, didn’t want to lose this, this closeness, didn’t want him to return to his own room, a few dozen feet away.

“Why?”

She shook her head. “I just…we talk about work so much. I just want to know something about you.”

“You know a great deal more about my personal life than I know about yours,” he mused. 

Alex hedged. “Well, that’s because you’ve been the subject of this story, not me.”

“And because you are incredibly…inquisitive?”

“You were going to say nosy, weren’t you?” She turned her head to see his face; a smile was creeping along his mouth in profile, even as his thumb began worrying at her knuckles. His fingers had calluses, which was surprising. “It's not my fault; it’s my job to want to know everything about you.”

“And what if I’d like to know everything about _you?”_

Alex’s heart skipped a beat. Her mind could conjure up a lot of meanings—and images—for _knowing everything._

“You know things.”

“I know that you like your coffee with far too much sugar, that you get a crease between your eyebrows when you’re thinking very hard, and that you always leave refilling your gas tank to the last minute. You rely strongly on your instincts about people, which serves you well more often than it doesn’t. You tend toward the obsessive when it comes to what interests you. You love your family but you don’t often see them. And you like to wear florals.”

“Wow,” Alex blinked, surprised. “You've been paying attention.”

“I always pay attention,” he answered, waving that off, refusing to be dragged off track from his point. “But everything I’ve just told you is strictly observational. None of it is anything you’ve told me about yourself. You hardly ever tell me things about yourself. Let alone anything…personal.”

“What do you want to know?”

He paused, considering. “I’d like to know a secret,” he answered finally. Almost playfully. Alex couldn’t decide if she was more charmed, or more terrified at the thought of revealing something ‘personal’. 

“What, is this truth or dare?”

Richard’s answering smile was indulgent. “No. You’d always take the dare, and I’d learn nothing.”

Alex turned back to face the ceiling. “Fine.” He had a point, after all. Richard was like a clam when it came to talking about himself, but she had always been good at prying it out of him. Now that he mentioned it, though, she felt a bit hypocritical. It was true that she was always trying to tease truths - whether vulnerable, or important, or just embarrassing - out of him. How often had she given anything in return?

She thought for a moment—only one thing was coming to mind, firmly in the “embarrassing” category, and she was desperately trying to think of anything else. 

Richard cleared his throat meaningfully.

“Okay, okay!” Alex covered her face with her hands. “You know those cheesy romance novels with the terrible covers that you see at the grocery store? Where it’s like, some shirtless guy in a kilt kissing a girl who is wearing like half an old-timey dress? I love those.” She reached behind her and pulled the lump from behind her pillow. “Amalia gave me this one for my birthday.” 

She tossed him the book and turned to see his face. His eyebrows rose as he took in the cover, where a man with some very impressive musculature had apparently lost his shirt. He seemed to be a pirate with surprisingly good teeth. The heroine was slumped dramatically against a ship’s steering wheel, clearly mid-swoon. She braced herself for whatever snarky comment was no doubt forthcoming.

“Well, it’s nice to know you’ve an appreciation for literature.”

“Okay, Mr. Ivy League! Sometimes it’s nice to have something a little formulaic, where the answer isn’t always ‘demons’ okay?”

Richard chuckled. “Fair enough.” He began to open the book to the middle and Alex snatched it away. There was some material she wasn’t sure she’d be able to survive hearing him read aloud.

“Your turn,” she insisted.

“My pastimes are somewhat less,” he appeared to struggle for an adjective, “amusing,” he finally finished. She twisted, making a half-hearted attempt to elbow him again, but his hold on her hand was firm. “I’ve taken up renovation since I moved in here. I ripped out all the tile in the master bath, the carpet in the bedroom, built new cabinets for the kitchen—“

“You can build cabinets?”

“Youtube tutorials. Ruby’s suggestion.” His lips were quirked up in another sly grin. She supposed that was where the calluses came from—building cabinets and ripping up floors. It actually fit him surprisingly well. “When I’m writing my books and my academic articles, I’m wrestling with things in my head, finding the right wording, the right argument. Sometimes it’s nice to just be wrestling with a plank of wood and a circular saw, instead.”

“That makes sense.” His finger trailed down to her wrist, and she could feel it resting against her pulse. “What’s your favorite color?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady. “This seems like something I should already know about you.”

“Blue. And yours?”

“Yellow.”

“That makes sense,” he informed her, parroting her own words. She wondered what he meant. “Middle name?”

“Emilie. After my grandmother. I already know yours is Anthony.”

“Stalking me?”

“I left you eleven messages. You can’t think I didn’t do my research.”

“Eleven messages,” he repeated. “I thought you were crazy, you know. And incredibly—“

“Persistent? Goal-oriented?”

“Annoying.”

“Hmph,” Alex huffed. “Well, now you know better. I’m just devoted to my work.” 

Richard’s fingers were swirling against her palm, teasing her nerve-endings. It was strange, feeling so utterly peaceful and yet practically tingling from the feeling of his skin on hers; she didn’t know such feelings could exist together, but leave it to Richard Strand to produce sensations that she hadn’t known were possible. Feelings that, knowing him, he had no idea that he _was_ producing. And yet, Richard so rarely touched her casually. He always held himself apart, until lately. Maybe…

She turned again to look at him and realized that his head was already turned. He’d been staring at her, it seemed. And now she’d startled him. He sat up abruptly, releasing her hand, which dropped rather forlornly to rest against the floral comforter of the bed. Behind her, the puppy emitted a great, whining yawn.

“I suspect he has the right idea,” Richard said quietly. “I should go.”

“You don’t…” _have to,_ Alex wanted to tell him. But she couldn’t. Uncharacteristic jealousy and delicious handholding aside, asking Richard to spend the night would be…

Well, it could be disastrous. In more ways than one. And for a moment, she was sure he saw it, that he knew what she’d been about to - what she wanted to - ask. His eyes widened, and she was suddenly mortified, dropping his gaze before he saw too much.

Still, embarrassed as she was, she didn’t want him to go. She had missed this so much, just talking to him. But he had already eased off the mattress which rose beneath her, relieved of his weight, and she stood up to walk him to the door. Behind her, the puppy raised his head curiously before letting it plop back onto the pillow. Sleep was clearly more important than the bizarre goings-on of these humans.

“Thank you again,” Alex said to him as they hovered by the open door. She motioned towards the dog. “This really is the best birthday present I’ve ever gotten.”

“And the best apology?” he asked her, his eyes sincere and hopeful.

“The absolute best,” she agreed firmly. And then, because she couldn’t resist, she shot him a cheeky grin. “I should interview all the people you dislike in the paranormal community. I’ll have enough dogs to run the Iditarod in no time.”

Richard harrumphed, crossing his arms. “I’m sorry that I overreacted, Alex, but the way he was acting…he even managed to make his goodbye inappropriate—”

“A kiss on the cheek is completely acceptable. It was all perfectly professional.”

His eyebrows soared upwards in disbelief. “I’ve never known a kiss to be ‘professional’.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I wasn’t aware that I was.”

Alex rolled her eyes. “Tannis and I are just colleagues. So everything that we do, we do as colleagues. You’re taking this out of context. We’re professional, aren’t we? You and me?”

“Always,” he muttered. Was it her imagination, or did he sound somewhat dissatisfied with that? Alex’s thoughts took a devilish turn and her body followed, leaning forward on her tiptoes. After all, she had a point to prove, and Alex didn’t like to lose. That was why she was swaying closer to him. Absolutely the only reason.

“So then, in our context, this is perfectly professional.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper as she leaned forward, pressing her lips softly against Richard’s stubbled cheek. She lingered there for a long moment, her hand pressed against his chest for balance. It rose and fell rapidly. She wrenched herself away and stood back. “See?”

Judging from the way her heart was thundering, Alex suspected that she had thoroughly disproven her point. But Richard, usually the first to notice any flaw in an argument, surprised her.

“You’re right,” he agreed, his expression as unreadable as ever. “That particular kiss on the cheek was perfectly professional, but I still hold that they aren’t as a general rule.”

“Well,” Alex argued, more on principle than because she believed her own words at this point, “if we’ve settled that _that_ was innocent, then I can’t imagine a kiss on the cheek that would be—“

Suddenly he was right in front of her, closing what little space remained between them.

“Like this,” he murmured, his voice rumbling so low she felt it in her bones. And then he was leaning forward, hands braced against the wall, maneuvering her against the doorframe. He didn’t kiss her, not right away. His lips hovered, tantalizingly close to her skin. She could feel his warm breath against her cheek, but he remained there for a long moment, anticipation building. And just when Alex thought she might lose patience entirely and yank him closer, Richard’s lips brushed softly against her skin. 

It was the barest of kisses, but it sent sparks whirring down her spine, the muscles in her abdomen tightening. His lips drifted again, up and down the hollow of her cheekbone, lingering. Alex melted closer, and she felt his hand come up to steady her face, his thumb stroking a tender place behind her ear. She shivered; she couldn’t help it. Richard’s mouth trailed down to her jaw, and her breathing quickened as he pressed a series of small, quick kisses along its line and back. His chin was rough where it brushed against her, but in a way that wasn’t at all unpleasant. It was giving her palpitations. Actual palpitations of the heart. And that was before he trailed back up, his tongue darting out to trace the shell of her ear and his teeth grazing against it. Her breath caught as he drifted back, dangerously close to the corner of her lips, but he stopped. Pressing his forehead against her temple, he paused, breathed in deeply, and then pulled back. His expression was almost as it usually was, near-perfectly composed, but in the dim lamplight Alex would have sworn she saw cracks in it. His breathing was still rapid, while hers was near non-existent.

Finally she managed to speak, because, well, one of them had to.

“That was…quite an example,” she muttered, dazed. “I guess kisses on the cheek can be…something.” She trailed off, completely unable to finish the sentence in any sensible way,

Richard huffed a laugh. 

“Goodnight, Alex.”

And with that, Richard walked away. Gently, Alex shut the door behind him. Then, she threw herself onto the bed. The puppy’s head popped up again and he gave a quiet, inquisitive _‘woof’._

Alex’s head was spinning. She felt almost tipsy. Richard Strand had kissed her. _Kissed_ her. And yes, it had just been a kiss on the cheek but…there was no _just_ about it. Alex found that she was fanning herself, actually fanning herself with her hand. If he could kiss her on the cheek like _that_ then what would it be like if they actually…

She collapsed back against the pillows.

That was it. Alex Reagan was not one to sit around and wait for things to happen. She was still scared—terrified, really—that she might be mistaking his desire for something else, but…she had to know. It was always better to know. She turned to the dog.

“Tomorrow, pup, I’m going on the offensive.”

He cracked open an eye, his tail thumping against the bed, and snuffled at her face, giving Alex his own brand of cheek kiss. She giggled, petting him.

For the first time in a long time, Alex wasn’t dreading her dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry it took so long to get this new chapter up! The holidays were crazy. But it's a longer chapter so I hope that helps to make up for the delay. Also, hooray for first kisses! Even if it is "just" a kiss on the cheek, I'd say that might have been a game changer, no? ;)
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it! Let me know what you think, and Happy New Year to all of you!

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! Here's chapter one of my very first Stragan fic! I recently discovered The Black Tapes Podcast and I just couldn't resist. I'd certainly love to know what you think! 
> 
> Stay safe out there, kids, and remember that noise coming from the corner of your darkened basement is NOT a ghost...probably.


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